Dreamer's Cat: a sci-fi murder mystery with a killer twist

by Stephen Leather

  As one we stand and salute our Commander and then we chant ‘Victory! Victory! Victory!’ as he strides out of the room. We split up into groups of three - a Pilot, a Weapons Officer, and a Navigator - and head for the hangars. The Pilot I am with is a girl, petite with close-cropped blonde hair and no make-up, the only sign of femininity the slight swell of her breasts under the uniform. Her name is Jill Manette. The weapons officer is black, muscular and squat, as tall as Jill but twice as wide. He grins a lot and jollys us along as we walk. His name is Xavier Barrymore.

  Our star fighter is in the second wave of nine. Men in white overalls and silvery helmets are dashing around, checking and double-checking, while some of the fighters are still being armed.

  The main hangar doors are still shut but the siren sounds, telling us that it’s time to suit up. The suit modules are ready under the wings and Jill, Xavier and I step into them, standing with our legs slightly apart and arms out at right angles to our bodies. The suit modules hiss as they close and the armoured suits clamp shut over our uniforms. When the modules slide open we are covered from our necks to the soles of our feet with black carbon-fibre plates, flexible and reasonably comfortable but also able to withstand the vacuum of space and the blast of a laser. The suits make a faint grating noise as we climb up into our gravi-seats. Our helmets are there, ready and waiting, and I slot mine home with a practised twist. The internal air supply automatically cuts in but I immediately plug into the on-board air. Jill and Xavier do the same. The canopy shuts. We are alone, surrounded by frantic activity but nonetheless alone. We are a team. Jill and I sit together, facing forward. There is a duplicate set of controls in front of me but it is for emergency use, nothing else. My task is to monitor the surveillance and guidance computers and to maintain contact with the rest of our wave and the Attack Commander. Xavier sits facing the rear, directly behind us, where he operates the defence and attack weapon systems.

  One by one the fighters signal their readiness until all three waves are prepared. Then the white-overalled technicians disappear out of airlocks at either side of the hangar and the huge doors slowly crank open to reveal the emptiness of space. The engines of the first wave kick into life and they roar out of the hangar in groups of three. Our fighter judders as Jill fires our boosters and then we lift off and fly out, the middle ship of the first unit of our wave. My stomach lurches as we shoot out of the mother ship and into open space. I look over my right shoulder and see the huge ship behind us. It seems to go on forever. We tilt to the right and the mother ship slides out of view. I look forward again and for the first time see the planet below, a swirling globe of blue and orange and yellow.

  The effect is good, very good. I am impressed by the woman who put this together. The visual effects are pretty well perfect, there is only a slight flicker when I look at the stars out of the corner of my eyes, and the sound is excellent. There is a vague smell of rubber from the helmet and the water that the suit system supplies for drinking has a faint chloride taste. I can feel the plates of the suit pressing into my flesh through the material of my uniform. Janet Dewar knew her stuff. Most people have no problem at all when it comes to the visual and aural side of dreams, but the other three senses are what separates the amateurs from the Dreamers. Try it yourself. Close your eyes and think of an apple, green and shiny. Now imagine the sound it makes as you bite into it. That’s harder, but most people can do it. Now hold it close to your nose and try to capture its smell. And the taste of it on your tongue. Or the feel of it as you chew it. Now keep the picture of the apple in your head and make it smell like a lemon, with the texture of a peach and the smell of a pear. Damn near impossible for 99.99 per cent of the population. And the other .01 per cent are Dreamers, like me and Janet Dewar. But even among Dreamers there are degrees of ability, and by the look of it she is top ranking. And this is only her fourth psi-disc.

  The Commander’s voice fills my helmet. He is leading the middle ship of the first unit of the first wave, as usual. He is speaking to all the fighters, telling us that the enemy has taken off and that we will make contact within four minutes. He is not telling us something we do not know because all Navigators have already seen the tell-tale blips on the nuclear propulsion detection system, but he is our Commander and always speaks to us before combat to let us know that he is there and that he is leading us.

  ‘Make Earth proud of you,’ he says and then we go into communication blackout. Space combat is so fast there is no point in inter-ship communication, there would be no time to shout a warning or advise fellow fighters on what to do. All that counts is the skill of the pilot, the speed and accuracy of the on-board computers and the programming of the battle computers. There is little for the Navigator to do during battle, it is all up to the pilot and the weapons officer, and even the weapons officer is secondary to his computers. Most of the weapons are operated by the battle computer unless specifically over-ridden.

  Jill gives me a quick nervous smile and I give her the thumbs up. We can’t see Xavier behind us but I guess he is just as nervous.

  ‘Three minutes,’ says Jill over the internal communication system. There are more blips on the screen now, and they are fanning out. I flick the read out onto the head up display in my helmet. Now wherever I look I see the blips superimposed on my field of vision. The Kueian fighters seem to operate in groups of six flying in a spear formation, five making up the point and the sixth close behind. There are at least ten groups of six so we are outnumbered.

  ‘It looks as if they were expecting us,’ says Jill, and Xavier curses. ‘Two minutes.’

  The planet now takes up almost a full quarter of our field of vision, but there is still no sensation of flying in to it as there is very little detail of its surface, just vague, swirling colours. There is no sign of the enemy fighters, though there are now eighty blips on the propulsion detector screen.

  ‘One minute,’ says Jill. My mouth is dry and I take a pull on the water nipple in the side of the helmet. I find it hard to swallow. I look to the left and right but I cannot see the two other fighters in our unit. They must be flying slightly below us. Far away to the left I can see a tiny star moving parallel to us which could be another unit in our wave, but I’m not sure.

  ‘Here they come,’ says Jill, then the fighter sways to the right and the seat seems to punch me in the back. My eyes blur with the acceleration and I don’t see anything go past but when I look at the screen again there is now a group of six blips behind us. The weapons computer fires the lasers automatically and Xavier lets out a cheer.

  ‘We got one!’ he yells and then I come close to blacking out as Jill flips the fighter into a corkscrew dive, the stars spinning and whirling through the canopy, then she jerks it hard to the left and we are flying directly into the planet. There are now four enemy formations behind us but there are still more blips being launched.

  ‘This is a bloody death trap,’ shouts Jill as she rocks the fighter from side to side. One of the formations is in pursuit and there are bursts of savage light flying past our wingtips. I hear a huge explosion to our left and I turn to see one of the ships from our unit disintegrate into a cloud of dust and flame. I smile, because in real life I wouldn’t have been able to hear the explosion - sound can’t travel through space. I get a small feeling of satisfaction knowing that Miss Dewar has been just a little too clever, and then the fighter starts spinning again and I almost pass out.

  I can hear Xavier shouting in my helmet and then Jill sharply tells him to cut it out. There’s another explosion, this time to the right, and then our fighter rocks as we get hit by the shock waves (another mistake on Miss Dewar’s part because shock waves can’t travel through a vacuum). We are the only ship left in our unit. God knows how many are left in our wave, but I see flashes in the atmosphere below that show how badly our first wave is doing. I wonder if the Commander has been hit.

  Jill is throwing our fighter from side to side and then I feel the juddering vibrations
as we enter the outer reaches of Kuei. There is a high pitched whine as Jill extends the wings of our fighter and the vibration gradually dies away. There are now more flashes of laser light. I look at the close range screen and see we are being pursued by four Kueian fighters, then one disappears and Xavier yells ‘Got him!’ in my helmet.

  We have two smart bombs left, one under each wing, and I hear Xavier muttering to himself as he keys in the co-ordinates of two of the enemy fighters that are chasing us.

  The ship lurches twice as the two bombs are jettisoned and a fraction of a second later their boosters burst into life and they give chase. I watch the screen intently and see the two targeted fighters take evasive action, punishing spiral dives that must be tearing their pilots apart, but it does them no good and the two blips vanish from the screen.

  ‘Two left,’ says Xavier, ‘and we’re out of bombs.’

  ‘No need to state the obvious,’ says Jill. ‘We can all read the screens.’

  We are so close to the planet now that it no longer looks like a globe. It is flat and seems to stretch forever above our heads. We are flying upside down, then Jill puts the fighter in a reverse downward dive and the blood rushes from my head until the suit squeezes and compensates. Good effect.

  She follows the dive through until we are flying the right way up and Kuei is below us. The Commander’s voice fills our helmets, breaking radio silence for the first time. The reception is bad, his voice crackles and keeps breaking up, but enough comes through for us to understand that the first wave has been ripped apart by the Kueian fighters and that we are to abort the attack and retreat to the mother ship.

  ‘Terrific,’ says Jill. ‘We go all that trouble to get them behind us and now we’re supposed to retreat. I wish he’d make up his mind.’

  The Kueian formations are splitting up and two more fighters are on our tail. We are only fifty klicks or so above the surface and the atmosphere is slowing us up so the Kueians are gaining on us, but the atmosphere also means we become more maneuverable so we’ll have the advantage if we fight but not if we run.

  ‘We are going to have to fight our way out,’ Jill says under her breath, but Xavier and I had already worked that out for ourselves.

  She slams on our reverse thrusters and lifts the nose of our fighter and we go into a tight loop, lasers flashing on automatic. We score two hits, destroying one of the enemy fighters and sending another spinning down with flames spewing from its left booster. Jill puts us in a dive again and kicks in our thrusters but as she does there is a flash of blue light and two metres of our right-hand wing vapourises.

  ‘We’re hit,’ yells Xavier.

  ‘Quiet,’ shouts Jill as she wrestles with the controls. It is obvious that she cannot steer the fighter as we yaw from side to side.

  ‘Call up environment status,’ she tells me, but before I can move the computer does it automatically, replacing the blips on the helmet visor with a readout of the land below. Temperature tropical but bearable, atmosphere richer in oxygen than Earth but with less nitrogen and higher concentration of carbon dioxide. Humidity much higher than Earth’s. Uncomfortable but breathable, but God knows what there is in the way of bacteria or viruses floating around. Not that our auto-immune systems are likely to get a chance to get to grips with them considering the way we’re in a crash dive with half of a wing missing.

  ‘Activate distress beacon,’ Jill tells me, and I hit the button on the console in front of me. ‘Find us a landing place,’ she says, but before I can answer she tells me she’ll do it herself and the environmental data is replaced by a map of the area below us. A small circle flashes up near the centre and the words ‘Optimal Landing Zone’ flashes in small green letters.

  ‘That’s it,’ says Jill. ‘Prepare to eject.’

  She stands the fighter on its nose so that we are diving straight at the ground some ten clicks below and then there is a tremendous whooshing noise and the pod containing the three of us, including the canopy, is thrown out, and again the suits squeeze to compensate for the tremendous acceleration. The pod has its own directional jets, but they do little more than change our direction, they are not powerful enough to get us back into space. The Kueian fighters leave us and head back to attack the rest of our wave. Jill tries to keep us on course for the landing area chosen by the computer, then when we are five klicks above the surface two huge canopies billow out from either side of the pod. We swing from side to side as we drift down. Jill gives us a quick briefing on what to do when we land. She tells us to grab our blasters from the racks behind our seats and our survival packs which are set into the arm rests. We are to unplug our helmets and when we are ready she will blow the canopy and we are to get as far away from the pod as we can because one minute later it will self-destruct.

  ‘Okay?’ she asks.

  ‘Okay,’ I reply and Xavier does the same. I hope I don’t sound as nervous as he does.

  ‘Get ready for impact,’ she says, and then begins to count down the distance to landfall in hundred metre units.

  ‘Four, three, two, one, brace yourself,’ she says and then the ground rushes up at us and we slam into it. The seats absorb most of the impact but it still knocks the breath out of me. The tactile sensations are incredible, this Dreamer really knows her stuff.

  I grab my blaster and its power pack and I pull the survival kit from its slot in the arm rest, and then I disconnect the helmet. The head up display immediately cuts out. I turn to look at Xavier and he is fumbling with his kit. Jill curses him and that makes him even more clumsy but then he too is ready and Jill shouts ‘Blowing canopy now’ and then the canopy is thrown backwards and the Kueian atmosphere rushes in, hot and clammy. We clamber out and drop down the side of the pod into orange mud which comes up to our ankles and we run together towards a thicket of bluish trees. The mud sticks to our feet and seems to pull us back and it makes a thick, squelching sound as we run. Xavier gets there first and Jill and I practically dive on top of him. We roll behind a thick tree trunk and hug the ground. The explosion is deafening but we can also feel the tremendous shock waves and the vibrations through the ground and then bits of metal and plastic are blown through the undergrowth above our heads. They fall down on us like raindrops and when I look up there is nothing left of the pod, just a smouldering crater in the mud. We are marooned on an alien planet. I sit up and take stock of our surroundings. The sky is a vibrant yellow. In the distance are a range of jagged mountains, white at the top suggesting snow and blue towards the base, vegetation perhaps. Most of the vegetation has a bluish tinge, perhaps whatever passes for chlorophyll on Kuei reflects the blue range of the spectrum rather than green. Nice touch, that. I scan the horizon and the mountains are everywhere. We are on a huge plain, dotted with clumps of trees and bushes. No sign of animal life.

  Steam is rising steadily from the damp ground and the air is wet and damp, but not uncomfortably so. My face is beaded with perspiration but my body feels cool as the suit is taking care of everything below my neck.

  Just to see how good Miss Dewar is, I scoop up a handful of leaves by the trunk of the tree we have been hiding behind and press them to my nose. There is faint smell of what could be thyme. I pull off a piece of it and chew it slowly. It is rubbery and tastes of spearmint. I am impressed, very impressed. She has an amazing sense of detail, and has produced effects that most viewers wouldn’t even bother with, wouldn’t even know were there.

  We are all still wearing our helmets, but with the visors up so that we can breath. Jill and Xavier get to their feet. They do not mention the fact that I am chewing blue leaves.

  ‘What now?’ asks Xavier. Even though we no longer have a fighter, it is still the Pilot who is in charge.

  ‘We walk,’ she says, without hesitation.

  ‘But any rescuers will come to our last reported position,’ says Xavier.

  ‘So will any pursuers,’ replies Jill. ‘The Kueian fighters must have relayed our position to their base, otherwise
they would have followed us down. No, we walk. If an Earth rescue ship comes we’ll see it.’

  Xavier gives me a pained look. Yes, I’d picked up the fact she’d said ‘if’ and not ‘when’.

  We walk three abreast, Jill in the middle, Xavier to her left and me to her right, at a brisk pace. The mud makes it hard work but the suits keep us dry and cool. We have no map, and no real idea of where we are going, Jill’s only plan seems to be to put as much distance between ourselves and the still-smoking crater behind us.

  After a few klicks we are all gasping for breath and we are continually changing our weapons from shoulder to shoulder. Xavier goes to take a drink from his survival pack but Jill tells him to take it easy.

  The yellow sky is beginning to darken and in the distance we hear eerie howling noises that could be animal or insect, no way of telling. The mountain range we are walking towards doesn’t appear to be getting any closer, and after a few more klicks Xavier asks Jill why we are bothering. Before she can answer the air is filled with the roar of engines and something, something big and black, screeches overhead. It is a jet plane about half the size of a fighter but with wider wings and two large vertical tail fins at the rear. It is not an Earth machine. The enemy has found us.

  ‘To the trees,’ yells Jill. ‘Move it.’

  We run to the nearest group of trees, bending double and groping for our blasters. The plane seems to stop dead in mid-air about one klick away from us, slowly rotating.

  ‘Has it seen us?’ asks Xavier, and Jill shrugs. His question is answered a few minutes later when two more of the black planes arrive. The three take up a triangular configuration around us and then they simultaneously float to the ground.