by Chris Bunch
‘Which is?’
‘Something frauds use to befuddle fools by pretending to predict the future.
‘All we need to know is they’re getting ready to hit us.’
‘Since no one knows the exact power of a Lumina,’ Taen said, ‘I’d first suggest that we communicate only in Terran, unless circumstances dictate otherwise. Perhaps they might be able to track me by my speech. I do not know. But I think it is time to take some action to disrupt their strategy.
‘If the station authorities had not disabled my drive when they permitted me to bring my ship into the station, the solution would be simple. I have more than enough power to punch through this dome.’
Wolfe stared at the Al’ar. ‘And what about the ten thousand or so people in the dome who don’t share our feud?’
‘What matter they? I do not know them. And they are not Al’ar.’
‘Sometimes I forget,’ Wolfe said, ‘just what made your people so lovable.
‘But there’s an idea there.’
There were three ‘moons’ overhead: violet, orange, yellow. The programmers of Tworn Station had decided to add exotica to this ‘night.’
The ship and its attached, extended structure sat in dimness. There were overhead lights along the lanes on either side of the square, and other lights gleamed from the nearby port terminal.
A few passersby paused, looked at the darkened marquee with disappointment, and looked for other pleasures.
Music came faintly, dissonantly, perhaps from a distant calliope.
Here and there in the shadows there was slight movement. A gun barrel gleamed, moved back into darkness.
A tiny hatch atop the ship’s hull opened, was seen.
‘Stand by,’ a Chitet section leader said into his throat-mike.
Something soared out, throwing sparks, smashed into the top of the dome, and bounced back, and the signal flare exploded. White light flooded the station, brighter than the ‘sun’s’ day.
Night observation devices flared, overloaded, went to black, died. Men and women staggered, blinded, seeing nothing but red.
The ship’s hatch slid open, and two beings darted out, bent low. A blaster bolt smashed into the deck beside them.
‘Only the Terran,’ Wolfe heard someone shout. ‘Don’t shoot unless you’re sure!’
A man came up, pistol in a two-handed grip, and Wolfe cut him down. There was a woman behind him, aiming a gas projector. She fired, and the projectile bounced out, spraying a white fog. Taen’s weapon, a long slender tube that fitted over one of his grasping organs, buzzed, and the woman screamed and fell, most of her chest seared off.
They ran down the passage, hearing shouts and the clattering boot heels of pursuit.
‘You should have walked your escape route as I did,’ Taen said.
‘I . . . wasn’t planning on getting out this way,’ Wolfe panted. He turned, sent four bolts at random to the rear, and ran on.
There were milling men and women coming out of doorways, shouting, screaming as the flare overhead died. Some recognized the corpse-white Al’ar, and their shrieks added a new terror to the swirling throng. Gunfire boomed, the screams grew louder, and Wolfe saw a young man gape in disbelief at the bloody mess that had been his knee.
They came to an open square with a deserted bandstand in its center. They ran toward the bandstand, and six Chitet rose from concealment and rushed forward, encircling them.
Wolfe went airborne, his feet lashed out, and he felt bones shatter. He let himself land on the body, scissor kicked the second attacker’s feet out, and pulled the woman down on him as the third’s rifle butt crashed down.
The woman grunted, and Joshua rolled from under her and was up. He sidestepped the weapon’s butt strike. His hand reached and then touched the rifleman’s elbow; he shouted, and the weapon fell from pain-numbed fingers.
Wolfe’s right hand came out in a finger strike, and the man bent double, trying to suck in the air denied him as Wolfe’s left hand tapped the back of his skull; the corpse fell limply to the decking.
Wolfe recovered and saw the fifth man’s body spasm as if electrocuted. Taen’s grasping organ flashed out once more, and the sixth Chitet contorted and dropped.
Wolfe and Taen ducked for cover, and a blaster bolt from behind crashed into the plas wall above them.
‘We appear to be cut off,’ Taen said, and fired a long burst behind himself.
Not far from the blackened crater the bolt had made was a panel, one of hundreds scattered through Tworn Station. Wolfe had seen them; then their commonality had made them invisible.
On the panel were three sealed boxes, one labeled FIRE, the second DOME LEAK, the third GAS. Under them was a warning: EMERGENCY ONLY
Any person who knowingly sets
off a false alarm will be prosecuted
to the fullest extent of the
Tworn Station Authority.
The most severe penalties will be sought,
including fines, imprisonment, loss of citizenship,
and banishment for life.
‘When in doubt,’ Wolfe murmured, and shot all three boxes open.
The night went mad. Sirens howled, screamed, clanged. Doors crashed shut. Partitions arched up from the deck, closing off the dome.
‘Come on! For the port!’
Lasers flashed overhead, to the side, and then steel walls rose smoothly, above a man’s height, blocking Chitet pursuit, continued to rise higher still until they touched the ‘sky,’ partitioning the dome and sealing Tworn Station against the anticipated blowout.
Wolfe ran for the dome wall, pushing his way through the crowd that had poured from nowhere.
‘To your stations ! Emergency stations!’ a man bayed. He saw Wolfe, the gun, then the Al’ar. He screamed something, reached into a pocket, and Wolfe snap kicked him into a wall.
The dome wall was just ahead, and a blister yawned open.
‘Inside!’
They dove into the survival pod as a gun blasted behind them. The pod was a thirty-foot-long cylinder with a rounded front and a squared rear. There were four rows of plas seats with safety harness and a small control panel with a single porthole above it. The air lock’s gray metal was visible outside. Wolfe slammed the SEAL sensor, and the pod’s hatch hissed closed.
‘Did you know this was here?’ Taen asked.
‘I didn’t. But there had to be something,’ Joshua said. ‘Shut up. I’m trying to figure out how this bastard works.’
He scanned the panel, ignoring the flashing lights, touched sensors, swore when nothing happened.
One panel was blinking insistently:
DO NOT LAUNCH WITHOUT AUTHORITY PERMISSION! DO NOT LAUNCH WITHOUT AUTHORITY PERMISSION!
There was a crash as the unknown gunman outside sent another shot into the pod.
‘Over there?’ Taen suggested.
Under the controls was a square box marked OVERRIDE. Wolfe ripped it open, saw old-fashioned manual knife switches, and snapped them closed.
The world lurched beneath him as the pod rolled out into the lock. Wolfe heard the clunks of another pod being moved into position as the lock cycled them out of the dome. Water frothed outside, rising to cover the porthole, and there was nothing but black.
Again the world roiled, and he stumbled, grabbing one of the plas seats to steady himself.
Taen curled himself into one of the seats.
‘Your departure from the station was successful,’ a synthed voice intoned. ‘Alarm signals on all standard distress frequencies are being automatically broadcast.’
Wolfe swallowed, equalizing pressure as the pod shot toward the surface.
‘And what happens next?’
‘We surface, and I call for my ship. Then we get the hell out of Dodge.’
‘And after that? What are your long-range plans?’
‘I would dearly like,’ Wolfe said, ‘to see tomorrow or maybe the week afterward.’ He became serious. ‘I don’t have many op
tions. Federation Intelligence will be after me for not killing you, and the Chitet won’t give up.
‘I guess there’s only two things possible: Either I start practicing how to become invisible on a full-time basis or else go looking for this goddamned Mother Lumina that’s got everyone on a skewed orbit.’
‘Are you suggesting,’ Taen said, ‘that you become my partner in my quest?’
‘If you wish me to,’ Joshua said carefully. The subject seemed better handled in his second tongue.
‘At one time, when we were little more than hatchlings, ’ Taen said, ‘I wondered what a partnership would have produced, when we achieved full growth. But I thought in terms of exploration of the unknown or something of that nature, and when I realized we were doomed to go to war with each other . . .’
Joshua waited, but the Al’ar did not finish the sentence. After a heavy silence, Taen continued:
‘But I have allowed the dead past to swallow me.
‘I observed the way you fought down below. You are a far greater warrior than when last I saw you. You have learned much with no one to guide you. You give great honor to your teachers, your fellow students who tried to help you learn the ways of fighting.
‘To answer your question, yes, of course. I welcome you, Shadow Warrior, and it is my honor to be allowed to fight with you.’
Something touched Wolfe, something he had not felt for time beyond memory.
‘We are approaching the ocean’s surface,’ the artificial voice said. ‘Would all aboard strap themselves down, in the event of bad weather on the surface, to avoid injury. One person designated as pod control officer should approach the controls.’
A board slid out from the control panel.
‘This pod has a range of approximately a hundred miles at a fixed speed of three knots. You will observe the controls provided.’
There was a joystick, a dial with a pointer, and a single slidepot.
‘The stick functions as a rudder, and the other control is a throttle. Use these to steer your craft.
‘Warning - do not expend your fuel foolishly. If there is a storm, do not attempt to sail out of it but wait until it has passed.
‘The third instrument indicates the nearest broadcast point. Keep the red arrow centered at the top of the dial and you will go toward it.
‘It is not likely that you will reach that point, however, since all stations on Montana Keep have been alerted to the emergency.
‘Do not become alarmed. You will be rescued in short order.’ The program shut down.
‘Wonderful,’ Wolfe said. ‘As if we need to advertise.’
He looked for anything that might access the pod’s transmitter, saw nothing.
‘We have worse problems,’ Taen said. ‘Look at the hatchway. ’
Wolfe turned and saw water seeping into the pod.
He hurried to the hatch. Halfway down it the metal was torn, blackened. Along the edge was torn, burned sealant with water beading through.
‘Our friend was a better shot than I thought,’ he said. Suddenly the metal wrenched farther open, and a stream of water gushed in, sending him staggering back.
‘Can we block this?’ he shouted over the building hiss of the incoming ocean.
‘I see nothing,’ Taen said.
The pod chamber was rapidly filling, water almost knee-deep now. Wolfe sloshed to the control panel, stared out and up. The blackness was less absolute, and he thought he saw light above. He felt pain in his chest, realized the pod’s atmospheric equalizer must’ve been hit as well, and began exhaling steadily.
‘Breathe . . . out . . .’ he managed. ‘Or . . . rupture whatever . . . kind of lungs . . . you’ve got . . .’
‘The question would appear to be,’ Taen said, undisturbed, ‘whether we gather enough water to keep us from rising before or after we reach the surface.’
The blackness was lighter, and then daylight blinded them. The pod shot clear of the water, then crashed back down. Wolfe was slammed into a wall, and his vision darkened, then came back. He looked out the porthole. The ocean was gray, with a small chop.
‘Are we still leaking?’
Taen waded to the hatch. ‘How interesting,’ he said. ‘I can observe the ocean beyond. It would appear that the hole is just above the water level, although waves are bringing in water every now and again. If we had pumps, we could pump it dry and be safe.’
‘That’s one of the many things we’re a bit short of,’ Wolfe said. The control panel’s directional needle was pointing to the right. He slid the control pot up to full, turned the joystick, and centered the needle.
He heard humming, and slowly, laboriously, the pod began moving, the water level now just below the smashed hatch.
You are in the sea . . . so you have allowed it to embrace you . . . turn away . . . you are letting it wash you, move you . . . you are not in control now . . . you are not part of the tide . . . reach for the earth, remember the earth, find your center . . . find the void . . . return whole . . .
His breathing slowed. He felt out, found nothing. He took the Lumina from his pocket, held it, not seeing it flame up.
Taen said something, and Wolfe felt surprise in his words but did not allow them to be heard.
Beyond there . . . out there . . . land . . . the jungle . . . the earth . . . feel on . . .
Involuntarily Wolfe swiveled, felt where the Centipede lay on the continent that stretched in front of him, felt its distance.
‘As a good guess,’ he said, ‘we’re only about ten, twelve miles from the lumber station where I came down to Tworn Station.’ He touched the plas that concealed the bonemike and winced as his fingers found a deep gouge in its surface that had been cut without his realizing it.
‘Ship, do you hear me?’
There was no response.
‘Ship, do you understand this sending?’
Again, nothing.
‘Ship, can you detect this device singing to you? Respond at once on this frequency.’
‘I hear a singing in a tongue none speak,’ came the response. ‘I am responding only because my logical circuits dictate you must be the one sending. If that was you sending previously, be advised your voice pattern no longer matches the one I am required to obey. Please inform problem. Be advised if input does not give satisfactory explanation, all transmissions from your station will be ignored.’
‘The transponder suffered physical damage. Do not terminate transmission. That is an order. Emergency override,’ and Wolfe switched to Terran, ‘Frangible, Onyx, Three, Phlebas.’
‘Your message received, understood. Emergency override orders acknowledged. Stress analysis applied. No sign evident that you are drugged or under control of a hostile. As instructed, I will obey your orders.’
‘Shit,’ Joshua muttered. ‘I think I’m a little too careful. Ship, do you have this station located?’
‘I do.’
‘Lift from the bottom but do not break surface until you’re a mile offshore. Then, at full power -’
Static suddenly roared against his bones.
‘Ship, do you receive this station?’
He felt nothing but the static.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Wolfe said. ‘I hope it’s just some kind of local interference. But I’ll bet I’m wrong. We’ve got troubles, partner. I think somebody picked up our transmission and is jamming it.’
‘The Chitet?’
Wolfe shrugged. ‘I guess our best chance is to ride this clunker to shore, hope the jamming stops, then call again.’
Taen’s hood lifted, subsided.
‘Then that is what we shall do.’
Thirty minutes later Wolfe saw the outline of the coast rise out of the gray water ahead. He couldn’t make out the Centipede yet but kept the needle centered. Less than five minutes after that the steady hum of the drive faltered, then quit. The pod settled, and water began slopping through the hatch.
‘We took a harde
r hit than I thought,’ he said. ‘How are you at swimming?’
‘I will float under this planet’s circumstances,’ the Al’ar said. ‘However, propelling myself through the water will be a very slow matter.’ He held out his slender grasping organs. ‘But I shall kick and flail as best I can.’
‘The hell you will,’ Wolfe said. ‘I’ll tow you. Let’s get this hatch open and out of here.’
He hit the sensor. Motors hummed, and the hatch moved, opening a few inches; then metal grated against metal. He hit the sensor again and heard a relay cut out.
‘We may not have to worry about swimming,’ he muttered. He braced against one of the plas seats, kicked, kicked again. The inner surface of the hatch caved in a bit but didn’t open.
Taen stepped in front of him and slid his impossibly slender grasping organs through the slit. He braced himself against one wall and pulled.
Joshua felt the Lumina in his pocket flame, heat. Metal screeched, and the hatch moved a few inches; then the relay cut back in, and the way was open and the ocean crashed in. The pod rolled, began sinking.
Joshua had an arm around the Al’ar’s thin chest. He pushed his way out, against the current, and was out of the survival pod.
He fought his way to the surface, swam a few strokes away from the sinking pod, and released Taen. He rolled on his back, forced his boots off, and let them sink. He unbuckled his gun belt, was about to release it, and stopped. He looped the belt around his neck and buckled it.
‘Now we swim?’ Taen inquired.
There was still nothing but the jamming roar to be felt through the transponder.
‘Now we swim. You lie on your back, keep your head above water, and kick with me. Sooner or later we’ll either drown or hit the beach.’
‘I shall not drown.’
Wolfe wondered what Taen meant, then put the matter out of mind.
Reach deep . . . the way is long . . . you have much power . . . your muscles are not torn, not aching . . . this is sport . . . breathe . . . breathe . . . now feel the sea, let it take you, let it wash you . . .
The pod was barely visible above the surface, rolling, about to sink, no more than thirty feet away.
A gray-green snake’s head as big as Wolfe’s body broke the surface, reaching ten feet into the air on a snake neck. Wolfe saw a flipper break the surface and turn the creature.
