The Soldier: Escape Vector

by Vaughn Heppner

  He regarded Dorian. “Look, if you help me, I’ll help you.”

  “What sort of help do you be wanting, Mister Moral Marcus Cade?”

  “The Rhunes captured my friend when they took my spaceship. I plan to rescue him.”

  Dorian stared at Cade, and instead of laughing, the life seemed to go out of him. He shook his head a moment later. “You have balls, I’ll say that. Not a lick of sense, but balls of brass. Saying that though—” Dorian scratched his beard. “No, no, you almost had me, Cade. I almost believed you. It’s clear that you’re from Graven Tarvoke. He’s the trickiest of bastards, maneuvering Rhune and Eagle-Duke against each other and toying with the mythic cyborgs. Now, he’s sent you, his cat’s-paw. He made sure you had a rough landing so we’d trust you.”

  “That’s absurd. It’s a miracle I’m alive.”

  “I might believe you, Cade, but you try to palm off the damnedest lies. You don’t want to screw Velia because of your wife.” Dorian laughed, slapping a knee. “I can smell Tarvoke’s cunning stink on you. You’re the kind of player he’d like to insert onto Coad. Velia must have understood that.” Dorian chuckled, shaking his head. “You almost had me with your story about Tarvoke trying to sabotage you with his message.”

  Cade bit his lower lip to keep from calling Dorian an idiot. What an annoying twit! I’d box his ears if I were free. Struggling to control his temper, he said, “Did Velia tell you about the size of my spaceship?”

  “She did.”

  “That proves my story, as my ship wasn’t big enough to carry cyborg bombs. Thus, I couldn’t strafe the surface. Thus, Tarvoke lied.”

  Dorian scratched his beard again. “What’s your point?”

  Cade sat back against the wickerwork bulkhead. It was foolish arguing with a twit—no, with a psychotic rogue. Realizing this checked his temper and helped him think. What had Dorian’s head jerks, glassy left eye, switch in accents and apparent shifts in intelligence meant? Would an airship captain like Dorian Blue really know so much about Tarvoke? If Velia hadn’t been a captive, why had she poisoned the landing crew? The crashed Descartes must have had something to do with that. The reality was that he was stranded and alone. Did Rhunes or Eagle-Dukes have any means of getting into space? Did Tarvoke have a way of spiriting someone off the planet?

  Cade closed his eyes as despair crept into his psyche. The odds he could get back to his space-time continuum… Be a hero, Force Leader. Laugh at the odds. If you’ve already lost, you can’t lose more by trying.

  Cade inhaled, expanding his chest and opening his eyes. He raised his bound hands. “Why are these still on me?”

  “Because you’re my prisoner,” Dorian said. “Lord Magnus will want to question you.”

  That was an obvious threat. But something about the way Dorian said that… Cade played a hunch, nodding. “That’s fine by me. In fact, I welcome his questions.”

  Dorian studied him a few seconds longer before shouting for Shed. The coarse-faced man reappeared at the hatch. Dorian told him to bring a canteen of water.

  Soon, Cade drank from the canteen, slaking his thirst. He accepted the tossed hunk of cheese, devouring it, not realizing until then how hungry he’d been.

  “With such a healthy appetite, you should be willing to bed a dozen women,” Dorian said. “But I’ve changed my mind about you again, Cade. You have a point about your small spaceship. Cyborg bombs are huge. So why are you here then, if you’re not Tarvoke’s spy? I’ve come to believe you’re a philosopher or scholar. Many of them have bizarre ideas. And that must account for your insisting that you’re a soldier instead of a proper warrior. Philosophers have the crankiest ideals. Ah, yes, now I understand this preoccupation about your wife. Amazing really. I think your size and apparent speed fooled me. I thought you a warrior first. Now, I see, you love ideas more than action.”

  Cade almost laughed at the stupidity. No one had ever said that about him before.

  “This gives my problem a new twist,” Dorian said. “Ideas, ideals—yes, I’ll do it, trusting that your philosopher ways will help you understand that your best chance is with us. Here, catch.”

  Cade caught his boot-dagger, sliding it back where it belonged. Next, he caught the key, unlocking his shackles and standing. Dorian’s behavior was more than just psychotic, but unbalanced and whimsical.

  “Feel better?”

  “Much,” Cade said.

  “Have you ever been on Coad before?”

  Cade shook his head.

  “Then, you’ve never ridden on an airship, have you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re in for a treat, sir. Follow me.”

  Bemused that his talking had worked after a fashion, Cade followed the captain of the Day Star, climbing out of the cargo hold. The gondola was constructed of wickerwork, which he’d already known. It contained a bottom hold and a middle and upper deck. The hold held the cargo, the middle deck the cribs and cabins for the crew and passengers and the upper deck for the diesel engine, fuel tank, propellers, steering compartment and outer walkway. There were a few rocket launchers securely tied to the sides. From what Dorian told him, the rockets were crude weapons with a fuse.

  Dorian went to a launcher, putting a hand on it. “We use these on enemy airships. The rocket races at the enemy vessel while the fuse causes the gunpowder warhead to explode, hopefully causing the enemy balloon to burn.”

  “And kill everyone aboard the enemy gondola?” asked Cade.

  “Airship battles are usually double massacres, at least when the airships move in close enough to hit each other. I’ve been in one such battle.” Dorian stared out to sea. “It was horrifying. Started drinking in earnest after that. The battle showed me that life was short and should always be enjoyed to the fullest every bloody moment.”

  Cade reassessed once more, as he well understood about battle fatigue, having seen it many times and felt its stirrings after a gruesome campaign. Seeing your friends burn and hearing their screams would unhinge most people.

  He clutched the wicker rail and leaned over, looking past the outer walkway that circled the upper gondola. The ocean was approximately eighty meters down. It was calm down there. He spied underwater reefs and schools of small fish. He straightened, looking around. All Cade could see was green ocean water in the distance.

  “How do you know which way to travel?” Cade asked.

  “You don’t have compasses in your universe?”

  “We do.” Cade pointed in the direction of travel. “That way is Lord Magnus’ camp?”

  “Of course,” Dorian said. “Why do you ask?”

  Cade didn’t reply, for out of the corner of his vision, he noticed that Dorian’s left eye had become glassy again and the captain’s manner more alert. Just what did the left eye signify? Back in the day, during The War, he would have known of course—

  Cade’s mouth opened in surprise, and he silently berated himself for stupidity. During The War, such a glassy eye would have meant a person carried an interior cyborg monitor. There would be one other telltale sign with a person carrying such an eye-monitor, and that would be a minuscule antenna and power unit to broadcast the data. Was that why Dorian always wore his hat? Yet, if that was true, that meant cyborgs were on the planet. And if cyborgs were on the planet, why hadn’t they conquered and converted everything already? This was a low-tech world. It lacked the weapons to defeat cyborg troopers.

  “You’ve fallen strangely silent, sir.”

  The soldier quelled a sudden pall of fear. Cyborgs meant chop shops and conversion into the enemy. He had to get off the planet, but he wouldn’t do that by losing control. It was time to lie—tactically.

  Cade pointed at the green horizon. “You were right before. This is an astonishing vista. It’s taken my breath—and my voice—away.”

  “Ah,” Dorian said.

  “How long is it until we reach Lord Magnus’s camp?”

  “Several more days,” Dorian said, glancing at him
sidelong.

  Cade nodded. “If I wasn’t worried for my good friend, Dr. Halifax, I could relax. Air travel is so serene.”

  “Your friend was in the spaceship?”

  “He was.”

  “Then you must forget about him,” Dorian said, “as he is probably already dead.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dr. Halifax wasn’t dead, but he was in a great deal of pain as he sat in the scout’s piloting chair with a broken collarbone. He was dehydrated, hungry and possibly delirious. For much of the night—an intensely dark night without a moon and stars—he had been shifting in and out of consciousness.

  The sun had finally risen high enough to shine through the open window into Halifax’s face. That brought a modicum of lucidity to the doctor. He blinked repeatedly and tried to sit up. He groaned instead, and the pain wakened him further. He heard a strange whine, and a lurch to the floating wreck of a spaceship caused him to concentrate.

  What did he know about the present situation? The scout had reached the planet Coad. He was alive. Cade was gone. The scout floated through the air, lowering now.

  Straining himself, Halifax managed to peer up through the window. He spied the cables attached to the scout’s outer hull. He saw the chrome housings and a raft bottom over each of them. The chrome housings obviously enclosed some kind of anti-gravity device. Someone on Coad had picked up the wrecked Descartes. The flying rafts were lowering the wreck—

  From outside the ship, Halifax heard sloshing waves. Yes, he recalled a vast green ocean. Had the sky-rafts brought the wrecked scout to a dock of some kind?

  A sky-raft moved in front of the sun, blocking it. The accompanying shadow seemed to cause Halifax to drowse. He no longer heard waves, heard anything until a loud metallic clank made him sit up. He tried to understand what it meant that the sky was gone, with a metal ceiling in its place. Was the wrecked scout inside a hangar?

  He raised an arm, imploring in a whisper for someone to help him, but no one heard the faint cry.

  Halifax slumped in the seat: dehydrated, no longer aware he was hungry and slipping into a possible coma. He wasn’t dead yet by a long shot, but maybe it would have been better for him if he had died during the crash.

  ***

  Faint garbled words invaded the doctor’s dream. He had no idea what the words meant. Then, something cool touched his collarbone. The grind of broken bone ends snapped him out of the dream into a bizarre, painful reality.

  The doctor stared up into a gaunt face with a shaven pate and sunken eyes and cheeks, making it seem like a skull. The black eyes were like inky dots, intense and intimidating, filled with penetrating intelligence. Halifax was aware that the skeletal man touched his collarbone. Yes, the person had a shape like a man. He wore a black robe, was reed-thin with skeletal fingers, the flesh like dried parchment.

  The doctor had no idea why the fingertips felt so cool. That changed in seconds as fiery heat invaded the collarbone. The wonder of it was that the heat felt good, refreshing and restorative. The pain began to recede until it completely vanished.

  “Strength,” the skeletal man whispered.

  As if by magic, strength flooded Halifax’s frame. The delirium departed as hunger faded. He was damn thirsty, though. The magic wasn’t strong enough to fix that.

  “Water,” Halifax said. “I’m terribly thirsty.”

  “I’m sure,” the man whispered. He leaned over more, unhooking the restraints that still bound Halifax to his chair. “If you’ll come with me, I can find you refreshment.”

  As the man backed away, Halifax sat up, touching his collarbone. It didn’t hurt. He psyched himself up and pushed against the collarbone. There was no pain at all.

  Halifax stared in wonder at the skeletal, black-robed individual. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “Why should it?”

  “It’s broken.”

  “Not anymore,” the man said.

  “You healed it?” Halifax asked in wonder.

  The man said nothing.

  Halifax stared into the other’s eyes before finally dropping his gaze. The other had the form of a man, but the inky eyes belied that, and the man was so skinny, as if he lacked even an ounce of fat. There was something else: a sense of vast intelligence and power, real power. Could the man—this person—really have healed him with a touch?

  “May I ask you your name?” Halifax said.

  “Call me…Uldin.”

  Halifax nodded. “Where am I?”

  “You are thirsty.”

  “Yes, yes, very thirsty,” the doctor said.

  “Then follow me,” Uldin said.

  Halifax followed the other, aware as he left the wrecked scout that Uldin had asked the question to make him heel, to follow. The knowledge of that remained even as he stared at the hangar bay. It was metal with a great sealed hatch ten meters above. Strangely, droplets formed along a crack between the two great closed hatches.

  “Where are we?” Halifax asked.

  “Underwater,” Uldin whispered without turning around.

  The answer startled Halifax. Underwater? Was that why it dripped through the tiny crack between the hatches? There was something else knocking at his thoughts. Eagle-Dukes would not live underwater.

  “Are you a Rhune?”

  Uldin halted, turning around to face the doctor. There was no smile on the skull-like face. The eyes burned blackly, however. “What do you know about Rhunes?”

  Halifax shook his head, afraid. “Nothing, really. I only heard the name.”

  Uldin studied him, finally nodding. Without another word, he turned, heading for wherever he had been going before.

  Halifax took one last look at the droplets pooling up there on the crack. Then he ducked his head as he followed Uldin through an open hatch into a narrow corridor. The corridor’s construction—he might have been on a spaceship. The route was longer than the doctor liked. He was parched, and yet he sweated in the muggy corridor. By the time he entered another chamber, the doctor’s garments were soaked with sweat.

  Uldin’s long black robe was dry. Did he lack sweat glands? The possible Rhune indicated a large wooden table. On the middle of the heavy table was a white bowl. In the bowl floated a dozen red petals.

  Was Halifax supposed to drink from there? He went around the table, reaching for the bowl.

  “What are you doing?” Uldin whispered.

  Halifax looked up. “I need water,” he said.

  “Not from the bowl. Sit.”

  Halifax pulled out a chair and sat. He noticed that three of the walls held floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books, and round nooks for tightly rolled scrolls. Was this a library?

  A door opened, and a hideous, short ogre-man ambled into the room. He had a human form and was immensely broad of shoulder and deep of chest. His long arms, knotted with muscle, dangled almost to the floor. His head was thrust forward, and he had a heavy ridge of bone over his small eyes. He wore tan garments and black boots. His one ornament was a chrome-colored collar around his thick neck. He carried a tray with a pitcher of water and a glass.

  The ogre-man set the tray on the table near Halifax and turned to go.

  “Pour him a glass,” Uldin said in a whisper.

  The ogre of a man—a modified man, Halifax supposed—halted. He shivered and hesitated to obey.

  “Must I retrain you?” Uldin asked in his sibilant whisper.

  The man-creature turned, picked up the pitcher and poured water into the glass. He set the pitcher on the tray and handed Halifax the glass. At no point did the creature—the ogre-man—look up.

  “Thank you,” Halifax said.

  “No,” Uldin whispered, without a trace of anger. “Don’t thank him. Thank me, as he is but an extension of my will, and it is thus I who gave you the water.”

  Halifax hesitated and thought better of resisting the man, or Rhune, who had healed him. “Thank you, Uldin,” he said, raising the glass and then draining the water. Oh, but
that tasted good.

  He set the glass down.

  “More?” asked Uldin.

  “I can pour,” Halifax said.

  “More?” Uldin asked.

  “Yes, please,” Halifax said.

  “You heard my guest,” Uldin said.

  Once more, the ogre-like man poured for the doctor. Halifax drained that as well.

  “Go,” Uldin said, “but leave the water.”

  The man-creature departed.

  Uldin was still standing. He regarded the doctor. “I’m a Rhune, as you suggested earlier. Does that surprise you?”

  The former mercenary case officer for Earth Intelligence said smoothly, “I’m too stunned by events to let anything else surprise me.”

  “Hmm. Let me assess the possibilities and facts. You consider yourself clever, and perhaps you are. Just before your ship reached orbit, Tarvoke sent a message. He said you would strafe the surface. Clearly, the message was for the Eagle-Dukes so they would fire at you with their ancestral weapons. They did, but your craft survived, which was something of a marvel. You were in the pilot’s chair, so I imagine the ship’s survival was due to your flying skills.”

  “That and luck,” Halifax said, intimidated.

  “Don’t interrupt me,” Uldin whispered without any change in inflection. But the menace was there just the same. “My acolytes are testing your craft even now. It has different lines from Graven Tarvoke’s vessels, so it may be from a different space-time continuum from his. I shall know soon enough.”

  “Wait a minute,” Halifax said. “You know about space-time continuums?”

  Uldin focused his full attention upon Halifax. The doctor could not hold that gaze, but dropped his to stare at the table.

  Don’t provoke him. Bow and scrape, and see what happens.

  “I suspect that you possess a Class Three mind,” Uldin whispered. “That would make you the smartest man upon Coad, possibly the equal of Graven Tarvoke. This is rare indeed. The probability of that happening in this instance—”

  “I don’t mean any disrespect, sir, but what class of mind do you possess?”