Not Fade Away

by Donna S. Frelick

  Gabriel stopped the scene again. He was still in the incubation chamber with the creature—and Del, standing in torment in the light. How could that be? He’d just seen Del leave with the others. Here, he realized, was the problem. There was a barrier, but the information they sought wasn’t behind it. Part of Del’s consciousness was trapped within it! The creature had never fully let him go.

  Gabriel stepped closer to the circle of light. It flared, reaching for him, and he felt the presence of the thing within. NO! SURVIVE! GET OUT! He held on to his link with Lana, felt her strength at his back. He pushed back against the light with a shield of dampening energy. The thing resisted, its shouting rising to a scream of terror and rage. He blocked his hearing, cloaked himself in protective armor. The creature fought him with both light and sound, creating a tangible force field around its captive that crackled and sparked with malevolent energy. Gabriel spread a blanket of calm over the field, draining off as much of the energy as he could.

  But he made no headway until Lana sent a message along their link: Tell it you mean no harm.

  Gabriel dismissed the apparent absurdity of speaking to a creature that did not exist in any real sense, much less reassuring it. I won’t hurt you, he thought. You are safe with me.

  --YOU LIE! YOU COME TO KILL ME!

  --I am not with them. I’ve come only for this man. Let him go, and we will leave you.

  --I WILL CEASE TO EXIST.

  Gabriel had no idea how to counter this argument. It was strictly true—once he had rescued this part of Del from inside the barrier, the creature’s hurtful lifeforce would cease to have its impact on Del’s mind.

  If the creature was partly cybernetic, however, it must respond to logic. You exist in the real world, outside this man’s mind. Here, we are interacting within the confines of an energetic construct only. Do you understand?

  There was a long pause. Then the glow around Del’s energetic avatar disappeared, and suddenly Gabriel was back within Del’s memory, seeing and feeling as Del had, pelting down the tunnel behind Kwai and Shef.

  The guard at the tunnel entrance was still unconscious—had Kwai killed him after all?—as the three of them huddled together in the dark of the tunnel mouth. “You see anyone?” Del said to his companions.

  Shef shook his head. “All clear.”

  “We should still have several minutes—perhaps enough time to return to camp—before they wake,” Kwai said.

  “We need to be on the shuttle before that happens.” Del told them.“Let’s go, back the way we came.”

  They ran the maze of stacks and slag heaps in the compound, double-timed it up the steep face of the bowl and over the lip without incident. With Shef taking the lead, they jogged through the desert to the road, and back down the empty road to within sight of the camp fence.

  Then the sleeping camp erupted—lights blazing, sirens howling—and from the guard towers frantic searchlights scoured the quad, the fenceline and the desert beyond. Kwai, Shef and Del diverted from the road into the scrub, scrambling for cover. They dove into a thorny patch of thigh-high bushes with a saucer-like depression at its roots.

  Shef spoke for all of them. “What the fuck?”

  “Someone woke at the tunnel,” Kwai answered. “Or found one of the guards we attacked.”

  Del shook his head. “We should have had more time.” His heart pounded out the answer, one he dared not speak. Something had happened inside the camp, where the others had been charged with stealing the shuttle. Their co-conspirators had been discovered, and their plans had just gone to shit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The three of them huddled under the thin cover, thorns two inches long snatching at their clothes, their hair, their skin. It was only a matter of time before the gates swung open and trucks full of guards roared out onto the road a few feet away.

  Del heard the whine of laze fire, saw the flashes from the guard towers. What are they shooting at? Then he saw it and heard it at the same time—the shuttle lifting above the fence, slow and clumsy as an ore freighter. Sweet Jesus!

  “The sons-of-bitches are gonna leave us!” Shef yelled. He broke cover and raced for the road before anyone could stop him, waving his arms and shouting at the craft, which was marking a lurching course away from the camp at a height of no more than 15 feet.

  Del saw no choice. He took off after Shef, praying he could catch the fool before the laze fire from the camp sliced him in two. There was no hope the shuttle would see them. It was still full dark and the craft was running without lights, as it should be.

  He watched the shuttle fly past the road, his heart sinking. “Just get away, you idiots. Save yourselves, at least.”

  Shef had cut across the desert to stand on the road, still waving as if those on the shuttle could see him. Del had slowed, giving up. But Kwai blew past him to stand beside Shef. He took a breath and opened his hands. A soft yellow light began to glow from his palms. Then it widened to engulf his arms, his shoulders, his whole body.

  The shuttle pivoted awkwardly and came back, then wobbled to an unsteady hover over the road. With a whoosh and a blast of gritty dust, it thumped to the ground. Shef gave a joyful whoop.

  The hatch popped, and Smith stuck his head out.“Get your asses on board. They’re about to drag us back to camp.”

  Del could see he wasn’t lying. The camp gates had finally opened, and an armed troop carrier was on its way out. He ran for the hatch and followed Kwai in.

  “What the hell’s the matter with this thing?” Shef said as the craft shuddered into motion.

  But Del could see their problem, lying unconscious in a corner of the craft. “What the fuck, Soker? You were supposed to intimidate the pilot, not knock him into next week!”

  Mule was at the craft’s controls, his eyes bugging out of his head. “I tried to tell him, boss. I can’t read these mulaak controls. I’ve flown orbital tugs, but none of this Gray crap makes any sense.”

  “No shit! And what happens once we get up to the ship?” Shef put in.

  “What you want me to do?” Soker grunted. “Guards catch us leaving cook shack. I break two necks, but one runs to sound alarm. Dis little fucker try to stop me with stunner. I make him go sleep.”

  Outside the shuttle, the troop carrier pulled up alongside and raked them with laze fire. But their escape vehicle was meant for deep space, atmospheric re-entry and the hazards of a possible crash landing; the guards’ weapons barely scratched the reinforced shielding that protected the shuttle.

  “We don’t have time for flying lessons, Mule,” Del said. “Can you get us in the air or not?”

  Kwai stepped up. “Take care of the pilot. I can help here.” He laid a hand on Mule’s bony shoulder. “Read the console now.”

  “Shalssit!” Mule turned, a surprised grin on his face. A flash of laze fire past his viewport drew him back to business. “Strap in, brothers, things are about to get interesting.”

  Del and Soker moved the pilot into an empty seat and strapped him in. Once they’d secured themselves, Mule didn’t wait another second. He worked the controls now like he knew what he was doing, and the little craft shot straight up with enough G-force to plaster Del to his seat.

  The ground dropped away, and the whine of laze fire fell off. They lifted over the desert, where Del could see the scar of the excavation in the ochre earth. As they passed over, the air shook and the ground collapsed around the mouth of the tunnel—their plasmion charges going off at last.

  Leaving it all behind, the shuttle lifted over the low hills that surrounded the scrubby flatlands, and higher still, until the curvature of the planet could be seen through the transteel viewport at the shuttle’s fore. The white sun appeared over the arc of the horizon, and against its glare, the tiny speck that was the mother ship for their life raft.

  “Orbital velocity, gents!” Mule said. “Zero G! And you’re welcome!”Kwai coughed discreetly. “Oh, well, I guess the fisherman had something to do with i
t, too.”

  Smith groaned. “I hate zero G. You got any barf bags on this tug?”

  Del ignored him. “How long until we rendezvous with that ship?”

  “Depends,” Mule said with a shrug. “Ten minutes or several hours, depending on whether we go direct or take an orbit or two first.”

  “Straight in or nothing,” Shef said. “The less time we give them to look us over, the better.”

  “I agree,” Del said. “But our original plan is fucked. The ship’s crew will have heard about the theft of the shuttle by now. We need a story for our little pilot to tell, and it better be a good one.”

  “He will be the hero of the story,” Kwai said. “We will be his unconscious captives.”

  Jones scoffed. “Are you fucking kidding me? Who’s gonna believe that?”

  “The Trojans believed it,”Shef said.

  “What are Trojans?”Jones demanded.

  “It’s the best we’ve got,”Del said. “Soker, wake up that pilot.”

  The big man reached over from his seat and tagged the little Gray. Soker probably considered it a gentle tap, but the Minertsan reacted like he’d been smacked with a construction timber. He jerked and sat up, black oval eyes even bigger than usual.

  “Do you understand Galactic Standard?” Del asked him.

  The Gray looked at him. Was that defiance or just mistrust? It was impossible to read emotion on a Minertsan face, Del had been in enough prison camps to know. And the alien’s aura could have been lit up like a Christmas tree and Del wouldn’t have known it.

  “Mule, is there a translator on this thing?”

  Mule searched his console. “Um . . . this, maybe?” He pressed a pad.

  Del tried again. “Understand me now? If you don’t answer, I’ll have my friend here rip your arms off.”

  It was a myth that the Minertsan race had no ears. They could hear just fine. After all, hearing was used for other things besides language in nature. Thus the Gray’s translator worked in both sound and visual modes and also allowed for a transcription of the craft’s outgoing transmissions. Del heard his threat repeated in a rough approximation of Minertsan.

  The Gray nodded.

  “Good. Then you will assist us in boarding your ship.”

  The little creature placed his hand deliberately on a pad in his armrest. “I will not.” His “voice” emerged from the control console.

  “You do remember what I said about my friend here?”

  The Gray looked at Soker and trembled. “I cannot do what you ask. My captain will kill me.”

  Del shrugged. “Certain death now or only possible death later. Choose.”

  “Your argument is compelling,” the Gray said, after a moment of thought. “What do you wish of me?”

  “First, tell me how many on your ship?”

  “The Captain, the Command Second, myself, the Navigator, the Engineer, a Healing Officer, a yeoman. But the Command Second and Captain are with the women at the camp.”

  Del exchanged a glance with Shef, who nodded. But his years of observation and questioning had shown him the way of things. A ship carrying a crew that small should have been an atmosphere-capable yacht, not a ship big enough for a shuttle. A cruiser or a destroyer, hell, even a passenger ferry would have had a bigger crew.

  Del watched as the creature squirmed under his stare. “There are no others?”

  The Gray looked from Del to Shef and back. “Others?”

  Kwai caught the drift of his questions.“You are Minertsan navy, correct? Not commercial class?”

  Del thought this was obvious from the uniform the Gray wore, but he waited for the creature’s nod.

  Kwai continued. “What class of ship?”

  “The Merssa is a Class II-a Hop-Stinger.” When he saw no one understood him, he tried again. “It is smaller than a Confederated Systems frigate.”

  “And its home port?” Kwai’s direction of inquiry was making sense to Del now.

  “Barelius,” the Gray said, after some hesitation. “Five ship-cycles’ travel. The women come from a party house there.”

  “So,” Del said, “The rest of your crew—”

  The Minertsan stared at his captors for a long, silent minute. The Gray had to know he had no alternative but to give them the information; Soker, at twice his size, sat in the seat next to him ready to beat the knowledge out of him if he refused.

  “They stay on Barelius when we make this run,” he said at last. “Those of us on the ship are hand-picked for this task by our commanders at Fleet headquarters. I do not know why.”

  But Del knew why. The Grays were trying to keep a secret—a secret that now lay beneath the rubble of a mountain of stone.

  “Making our final approach to the mother ship, boss,” Mule said. “Got somebody squawking from the ship.”

  “Showtime, pilot,” Del said. “You know we have nothing to lose if we crush your skull and let the shuttle crash in flames inside the landing bay, correct?”

  The Gray nodded.

  “Then take your place at the helm. Tell your commander you’ve regained control of this vessel after a fierce fight between yourself and one of the guards and some slaves who tried to take it. The guard has been injured. Do you understand?”

  “But what about the Captain and the others?”

  “We told you they were dead, poisoned, and forced you to take off. The fight happened mid-flight.”

  “They will not believe such a story.”

  “They had better believe or you’re dead.” He nodded at his man. “Now, Mule, move it.”

  The two unbuckled their restraints and switched places, then settled in again, the Gray in place behind the flight console. He donned a circlet around his neck, and his voice came through the translator in response to the hails in Minertsan from the Merssa.

  “Bridge Commander, this is Anak. Shuttle requesting return to ship.”

  “Anak! Is that you? Confirm your identity at once!”

  “Pilot Tison Anak, Identification Code Q467331G. Apologies, Bridge Commander, but there was some damage to my communications equipment during the fight to secure the shuttle. There was an attempt by several slaves to hijack the Duk, but Security Tech Basson and I regained control several segments ago.”

  “Shalssiti pulaak!” the officer exploded. “We nearly destroyed the Duk and everyone aboard, thinking the slaves were in control of her! Let me speak to the Captain.”

  Del tensed. The pilot’s reaction would sell the lie, or mean their destruction.

  “The . . . Captain, sir? But . . . the slaves told us he was dead! Along with the Commander Second and all the women. They said they had been poisoned! Only Security Tech Basson, who had been left with me at the shuttle, was spared.”

  “You fool! They were merely drugged, not dead! They must still be on the planet, awaiting transport to the medbay. Go back right now!”

  The pilot turned to look at Del, and his face showed no emotion at all. But Del was certain if he could read auras, the Gray would have shown his panic in colors of green and yellow. Del shook his head slowly. They weren’t going back.

  “But, Commander Lodiss! Security Tech Basson is injured. He needs immediate healing. And I am nearly out of fuel. If you would only let me—”

  “Oh, very well!” Lodiss paused, and after a moment his digitized voice was calmer. “The Captain may be inclined to forgive the delay since you captured the escaped slaves. Permission to come aboard in Landing Bay One. The HO and Yeoman Syltek will be standing by to meet you. Refuel and return to the planet surface as soon as possible. Bridge Commander out.”

  “Who is Lodiss?” Del asked as soon as the intership comm was silent.

  “He is the Engineer,” Anak clarified. “He serves as Bridge Commander in the absence of more senior officers.”

  “Who else is likely to be on the bridge with him?”

  “The Navigator.” The pilot turned big, black eyes in Del’s direction. He might have been pleading. “Ma
y I focus on my piloting duties now? The parameters for coming to rest in the landing bay are restrictive.”

  The bay yawned before them, and the navigational system was blaring alarms. “By all means,” Del allowed.

  The pilot turned quickly to his console, and the alarms died as the shuttle aligned with the bay entry. Still, Del’s pulse pounded in his temple. Any second Lodiss might change his mind and use the plasma cannon on the Merssa’s flank to blast them into fragments. Del had to rely on the confusion they’d caused on the planet below with the destruction of the incubator to keep them safe just a few more minutes.

  Light spilled into black space from the landing bay, pale green and welcoming. Inside, twin rows of red running lights directed the shuttle to its designated slot. The Gray pilot manipulated pads on his console with long, delicate fingers and the shuttle obeyed, hovering in perfect alignment to the bay doors, then following the red tracks inside. The twin tracks turned yellow as they slowly approached the end of the bay, then blue. The shuttle floated to a stop, settling onto its skids with a barely perceptible bump. The bay doors closed, and an ear-piercing whistle sounded to warn them of the return of gravity and atmosphere in the space outside.

  Del felt his body grow heavier in his seat, though not as heavy as he’d become accustomed to on the ball of dirt below them. The ship maintained a measure of gravity to match the planet of Minertsa, he supposed, one that was smaller than his own home of Earth. He’d forgotten exactly what that felt like, being shuffled from planet to planet at his captors’ whims. He only knew it was one reason the slime lizards valued his kind—even the scrawniest of humans was John Henry next to the Grays.

  “Aw, perai!” Smith groused. “It’s gonna be bouncier than a cheap whore out there. I’m definitely gonna hurl.”

  “Shut up,”Del ordered. He could see the hatch leading into the ship from the Landing Bay had opened and two female Grays had entered. One was leading an anti-grav stretcher piled high with med equipment; the other was wearing body armor and carrying a stun gun.

  He placed a hand on the pilot’s neck. “Go to the hatch and call them in. Tell them you need their help getting the guard out onto the stretcher.” He looked to his men. “Who’s got the stunner?”