by Ben Jeapes
A smaller XC, another one which Joel thought he recognized, came up to him and Joel almost yelped when he saw his aide in its hand. Then the suited figure held it out to him. Joel’s mind seemed to detach from his body and it was as if a stranger watched him reach out and take it. No fuss, no XCs going for their guns. This was all official, kosher, above board. The XC ostentatiously let go of it once Joel had a firm grip; yes, it really was his to keep. Then the XC jetted over to the lifeboat to help the one with the camera.
‘Thank you,’ Joel said. He keyed in the command for a general self-diagnostic. The display lit up: A-OK.
Did XCs know these things could communicate? Well, he would have to find out. He changed functions and again keyed: Open channel to Boon Round.
Channel open, cue BR, said the display. So Joel keyed: Tx BR: Do you read me?
A pause, then: Rx BR: Yes.
Boon Round’s suit radio was also out but the Rustie was wearing his translator unit; which, like an aide, doubled as a communicator.
More letters appeared on the display as Boon Round asked a question. Rx BR: What are we doing here?
Tx BR: Don’t know, Joel replied.
Rx BR: Do they intend to let us on board?
Tx BR: Search me.
Rx BR: For what?
Joel glared at the latest message, then quickly looked up; how were the XCs reacting to all this longhand chit-chat? Still happy?
Still happy. The XCs were looking at him closely but they had made no effort to interfere. Yet they must have realized what was happening. Didn’t they mind that their two captives were standing here, next to a fully functioning lifeboat . . .
It sunk in suddenly and took Joel’s breath away. Were the XCs actually letting them go?
Boon Round was on again. Rx BR: Can you interface your aide with the lifeboat systems?
‘I don’t think we’ll need to,’ Joel said. More slowly: Tx BR: I don’t think . . .
More movement out of the corner of his eye. Two XCs were entering the bay with – Joel swallowed – a body bag between them. A dead human. Behind them, two more with a dead Rustie. Behind them, more bodies.
‘They really are sending us back!’ he exclaimed. ‘All of us!’ Surely, even Boon Round couldn’t complain about this.
The XCs towing the dead Rustie entered the bay and Boon Round went berserk. His suit thrusters blazed and he dived into the small cortège on full power, sending the XCs flying.
‘No!’ Joel howled. The dream scenario, the magical answer to his prayer, was evaporating before his eyes. Boon Round ricocheted of the wall and flung himself at another XC. One of the Rustie’s flailing limbs caught hold of the safety rail on the catwalk and he swung round to crash into two more of the XCs; two more out of the crowd that was converging on the disturbance.
And Joel, to his horror, saw weapons being raised.
He set his aide to audio pickup and pressed it against the visor of his helmet, hoping it could detect the vibration of his voice.
‘Lifeboat systems command! Recognize Gilmore, J., Lieutenant!’
A couple of XCs with guns were trying to get a clear shot at Boon Round, but several more of them were grappling with the Rustie, trying to get him under control.
Words on the display . . .
Gilmore, J., Lieutenant, recognized.
‘Lifeboat systems command!’ His throat was already aching with the need to shout. ‘All systems override, open inner airlock hatch!’
Complying.
A cloud of vapour erupted from the lifeboat entrance. A couple of XCs were picked up by the blast and sent spinning along with items of loose equipment and the unsecured contents of the lifeboat cabin.
Joel set his own thrusters to full and dived into the maelstrom of condensing gas. He cut thrust as he felt the artgrav field take hold of him and his feet touched down on something solid. He reached out blindly for the handholds he knew were there and hauled himself into the main cabin.
Tx BR: Get into the lifeboat! he keyed.
No answer. Joel repeated the command as he ran past the rows of seats, forward to the flight deck.
Rx BR: I am coming.
‘Yes!’ Joel shouted. He dropped into the pilot’s seat and entered the commands that put all lifeboat systems on standby, ready for immediate launch. He felt the vibration through his feet, a distant hum as the flight systems powered up and the bars on the power displays moved up out of the red and into the green. The default destination, the step-through generator, appeared on the display and he punched another key to accept it and lock it into the nav computer.
He twisted round in his seat to look back through the hatch and down the cabin to the airlock at the end. His hand was poised over the flashing red ‘launch’ button on the pilot’s desk in front of him. The hurricane was thinning out and the cloud of vapour was almost transparent now. The familiar shape of a Rustie appeared in the inner hatch, braced against the outrushing air.
Joel’s hand came down. A slight vibration, the dizzy blur of the lifeboat bay rushing past the viewports, and the lifeboat was out into space.
‘Your four-legged moron, what were you doing?’ Joel shouted. He strode back down the cabin and the shout was futile because the lifeboat was still airless, but it relieved his feelings. ‘They were letting us go! They were . . .’
The words dried up in his mouth. Behind Boon Round, he could see a spacesuited hand grasping the edge of the inner hatch. He moved slowly, cautiously forward, and angled round so that he could see into the airlock. An XC was clinging on for dear life with that one hand, and it was the upper arm – the one that didn’t have fingers as such but did have claws. Only the XC hadn’t been able to extend its claws, because that of course would puncture the suit. Its hold was precarious.
The other upper arm was stretched out into space and another XC dangled at the end, holding on with both lower hands. The air leaving the lifeboat was down to a light breeze, but Joel could still see that if the on-board XC let go, both would probably be pushed out into space by the remaining pressure.
How had they got there? Joel could picture the scenario. Say both were close to the hull when the drive field came on. The gravitational eddies would have caused chaos in the bay, but right close to the hull it would have been an area of almost calm. Maybe the gravitational forces had plucked at them, but not much, and the smaller one had been able to get a grip on the lifeboat itself.
All sorts of options ran through Joel’s mind. Shut the outer hatch; that would deal with the second XC. Shut both hatches, repressurize the airlock and blow it again; that would deal with the first. But the markings on the suit of the dangling XC looked familiar, and the XCs had been trying to set them free, so he slowly walked forward, took hold of the inboard XC’s arm and helped haul the pair of them into the cabin. Then he shut both hatches and set the cabin to repressurize.
The first thing he saw as he turned round was Boon Round about to attack. He recognized the flexing of the hind limbs, the poise to pounce, and he quickly positioned himself between the Rustie and the XCs.
‘No,’ he said. And there he stood for another minute, angling himself between Boon Round and the XCs every time the Rustie tried to get past him, until the display inside his helmet told him that the cabin was up to pressure again. He reached up and touched his helmet release.
‘They’re XCs!’ Boon Round shouted.
‘I know.’ Joel half turned so that he could look at Boon Round and the XCs at the same time. They were looking at him and at each other and he suspected they were communicating furiously, but as XCs didn’t talk through moving mouths it looked as if they were just standing there.
‘They killed our siblings! Human and First Breed!’
‘They were going to let us go, before you went mad,’ Joel said. He put his helmet on a seat.
‘I saw the bodies of my slain pridemates! What was I to do?’
Joel bit his lip and didn’t answer, because there was no answer. If he was
ever in the position of watching his entire family massacred then he might be in a position to judge Boon Round’s actions.
He also had to admit he didn’t actually know what the XCs’ intentions had been; and even if they had been friendly, he doubted the mood would have lasted following Boon Round’s outburst and the lifeboat’s abrupt departure with two accidental passengers. Going back to drop them off wasn’t an option.
But if he was to keep them, where to put them? The lifeboat’s main cabin was just like the cabin of a normal passenger shuttle – rows of seats facing forwards, with an aisle in between and the flight deck at the end. Aft was the power compartment, the galley, the washroom . . . nowhere really secure to put the XCs. Even if they could be locked up somewhere, he didn’t want them out of his sight.
So he crossed quickly to a wall locker, took an object from it and aimed it at the aliens.
‘We’ll be at the step-through generator in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘When we get there, we’ll chuck ’em into space and let their people pick them up. Meanwhile we keep them covered with this at all times.’
‘That is an optical fibre calibrator,’ Boon Round objected.
‘I know. They don’t,’ Joel said. He hefted the long, thin and suitably gun-like tool with what he hoped was armed confidence. Maybe the XCs were taken in, maybe not, but either way they didn’t move. ‘Boon Round, make yourself useful. Get up to the flight deck, confirm we’re broadcasting the right signal to let the generator know we’re friendly. And set the lifeboat to come to dead stop half a mile off.’
He was slightly surprised when Boon Round meekly obeyed. Joel, you’re turning into a leader, he thought, and grinned. Who cared? They were alive and going home, and that was what mattered.
‘Martial Mother.’ Stormer’s voice crackled with anger in Barabadar’s headphones as the Marshal of Space’s suit thrusters carried her back to the asteroid, a sheer rock face that filled her vision dead ahead. Her suit’s computer was aiming her at the dark circle of the ship cavern.
‘Tell me the worst,’ she said.
‘Twelve dead, Martial Mother. Their armour ruptured when they were smashed against the sides of the cave. And two missing .’
Twelve dead. Battle hormones doubled their rush into her bloodstream and she raged silently as she flew through space. She and Stormer and the others who still lived had survived only by chance. When that . . . that thing had taken off, everyone in the cave had been sucked out with it, as if caught in some kind of slipstream. Except that there could have been no slipstream in a vacuum – and yet, Barabadar herself had been flung far enough for her suit to take a couple of minutes to slow her down and reorient her to thrust back to the rock. Did it play with gravity? Had there been some kind of gravitational backlash as it fired its engines?
She put the speculation to the back of her mind as Stormer continued.
‘Martial Mother . . . I have to report that one of the missing is your Third Son. He is not among the dead that we have found but he isn’t responding to calls.’
Third Son! Barabadar felt the sudden horror of loss. Third Son gone, and no body to take a full Sharing from . . .
She gave no hint of it in her response, carefully vetting the harmonics of her speech for any trace of emotion. ‘I see,’ she said.
‘My Learned Mother Oomoing is also missing,’ Stormer said, and Barabadar cursed. Third Son was one thing; he would be mourned properly, she had old Sharings of his, and sons Four through Twelve would welcome the promotion. But the loss of Oomoing would annoy the Scientific Institute, which would annoy the government, which would all come crashing down on her.
Well, she would just have to take it. The fact was, infuriating and costly though the business had been and even though her plan to return the Not Us to their own people hadn’t unfolded quite as she would have liked, the net effect was the same. She still had a load of dead outlanders on her hands but the live ones were on their way back.
A new voice spoke inside her helmet.
‘My Mother, this is First Son.’
‘Yes, First Son?’ Her oldest offspring was on watch onboard her ship.
‘We’ve been tracking the course of the outlander ship and using the probes in Firegod orbit to project ahead of its course. Now we know where they’re going and where to look . . . My Mother, the probes have detected something.’
‘Another ship?’ Had the outlanders come in force already? Was it too late?
‘Too small,’ First Son said, to her relief, ‘and it’s just sitting there in space. It’s small and dark and using some kind of stealth, but once we knew roughly where to look . . . ’
‘I know.’ Hidden in space, just like the outlander base itself . . . but that didn’t mean it belonged to them. It could still be some covert probe from another Homeworld nation.
‘One of our probes is in a position to do a flyby,’ First Son said. ‘I’ve already sent the orders.’
Of course, if it was outlander . . .
‘Tell it to abort,’ Barabadar ordered.
‘Very well . . . My Mother, the object is signalling the probe.’
‘What’s it saying?’
‘Unknown, but . . . Oh.’ First Son sounded almost despondent.
‘What?’ Barabadar said, not sure if she really wanted to know.
‘The object has exploded, My Mother.’
Step-through generator has self-destructed following non-receipt of correct codes, said the display on the pilot’s desk.
Joel stared at it in horror.
‘Oh, crap,’ he said.
Five
Day Ten: 12 June 2153
’Now what?’ said Boon Round. Joel swung round to the Rustie, who was still holding his captive XCs at calibrator-point, but for once Boon Round’s query sounded genuine, not sarcastic.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. He turned back to look at the displays on the pilot’s desk. The lifeboat was still heading away from SkySpy – no problem there. It was still heading towards the Shield, where at least one XC ship was in orbit. The lifeboat could outmanoeuvre any XC ship built and go anywhere in this system, but it wasn’t a full-size starship and sooner or later he would have to start paying attention to its limited resources.
Boon Round was having similar thoughts. ‘These two are a drain on our reserves and they are part of the armed forces that slaughtered my pride. We should execute them.’
‘Sure,’ Joel said without looking round. ‘Set your calibrator to kill.’
‘I meant—’
‘Boon Round, they can’t eat our food, we can recycle the water indefinitely, and this boat was built for the full SkySpy complement, so two of us and two of them aren’t going to drain anything.’ Food: a good point. Joel fantasized briefly about force-feeding the captives with chocolate bars.
‘We throw them out of the airlock and let their friends pick them up.’
‘If you think you can persuade them to get into the airlock, go ahead.’ Good will only went so far: Joel knew that his intentions were benign, but would the XCs guess? And would they care if they did? Or, if pushed too far, would these two just risk the calibrator and jump him and Boon Round? Better, he thought, to keep them where he could see them and not provoke them at all.
‘So what do you suggest?’
‘Keep them at gunpoint and let me think.’
He thought. As far as the XCs on SkySpy knew, two of their kind had been kidnapped, and Joel had an idea of what happened when XCs felt vengeful. Chances were that the XCs would come after them. They needed to lie low until the rescue ship – and there would be a rescue ship – got here.
Somewhere.
Joel called up the planetary display and immediately discounted the nearest planetary body, the Shield, as an option. The Shield had XCs orbiting it, so no lying low there. The lifeboat could outfly an XC ship but not necessarily outgun it.
So, next stop? He called up a display of the solar system. The optimum course for the lifeboat would be to c
ontinue its curved trajectory, on around the Shield and then downhill into the system towards the sun and . . .
He grinned. Then he laughed, a dirty, unpleasant chuckle. Oh yes. Oh yes! It was too perfect.
A century ago, the first mission to this system from the Roving had secretly observed the XCs’ first go at interplanetary travel. The journey had been made to wipe out the non-technological inhabitants of the system’s third world. The XCs now referred to the place as the Dead World, a name which humans and First Breed had picked up, and it was the one place that everyone knew XCs avoided like the plague.
The Dead World and the Shield were almost at perigee, as close together as their respective orbits ever brought them. With only a little nudging, the lifeboat could cruise there in a couple of days. The XCs would take much longer, if they followed at all. And the lifeboat could go into orbit and await the rescue ship.
Joel entered the necessary commands and turned back to give Boon Round the good news. He wondered if the Rustie would see the irony of sheltering there. Even Boon Round might find it amusing.
Still in her space armour but with her helmet under one arm, Barabadar entered her cabin. She leaned against the bulkhead while the facts whirled through her mind.
The outlanders were heading for the Dead World. Unless they deviated from their course, and making huge yet apparently reasonable assumptions about how quickly they could decelerate, they would enter orbit around the Dead World in a day and a half.
The Dead World! Barabadar could hardly believe how her bad luck had been compounded. What did they know about the Dead World? Did they know of the inhabitants’ fate or was it all just a ghastly coincidence?
Every instinct shrieked at her to go after the creatures, even though the journey would take one of her ships almost a twelve-day and a lot of fuel. The outlanders had caused the loss of Third Son and honour demanded vengeance, and on general principle to have an outlander ship flitting at will around the solar system, her solar system, was untenable. But she still believed the outlanders would be sending reinforcements, and the chances were they would appear in this vicinity of space. She owed it to Homeworld to be here to meet and confront them.
