by Chris Ward
‘Because I’m Galactic Military Police,’ she said. ‘Estron Quadrant Command.’
Haverland drew back. Blasters appeared in his two middle hands. ‘Is this some kind of a bust?’
Lia stepped back and lifted her hands, shaking her head. ‘No. This is unofficial. This is my word to you.’
A slow grin spread across Haverland’s face. ‘Well, if that’s the case, then you won’t mind leaving your badge as insurance.’
Lia hesitated. The badge was her last link to her past, and despite leaving the military police in acrimonious circumstances, the badge still held power. It had got her out of difficult situations in the past, and without it, she was truly a no one.
‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘Just make sure you’ve got a fighter that’s fast.’
Haverland laughed. ‘Oh, I have. Don’t worry about that. They have to be to outrun the storms.’
Lia nodded. ‘You can drop the guns now.’
‘Not until you drop the badge. I’ve seen your people at work, and for the likes of me, it usually isn’t pretty.’
‘Like I said, this is unofficial.’ She tossed the badge to the floor, and Haverland bent to pick it up, still keeping two blasters trained on her. He put it into a pocket in the thick grey coverall he wore, then nodded.
‘A pleasure doing business. Follow me.’
He led Lia to a small motorised cart and then drove them both through hangar after hangar of crumbling, decaying spacecraft, some barely more than wrecks, others partially dismantled. Some ships hummed with the presence of palm-sized recycling robots, others were dusty and silent. Far above, the hangars rose into blackness, their ceilings invisible.
‘Quite an operation you have here,’ Lia said.
‘You get a lot of fools trying to fly in through the firestorms,’ Haverland said. ‘Someone needs to go pick up the remains. The government requires it. I even get a stipend for each craft I pull in. Most just sit here. Not much business, and there are far cheaper traders out in the asteroid belt where you won’t have the hassle of getting a ship through a thousand-degree firestorm.’
The cart stopped at a large pair of steel doors. Haverland called over a limping transportation droid and had it open them, revealing a small fighter spacecraft sitting on a frame of steel girders.
‘A Dirt Devil? Is that it?’
Haverland shrugged. ‘I pulled it out of the ruins of a freighter that crashed in a storm a couple of Earth-years back. Landing gear was busted, but the rest works fine. You wanted something fast.’
‘And preferably safe to fly in a firestorm.’
‘Look, I’m a junk dealer. Perhaps you should take your request to enter a quarantined zone to the city governor?’
Lia scowled. While Haverland hadn’t strictly duped her, going out on the surface of a fire planet in something as lightweight and flimsy as a Dirt Devil was asking for trouble. Worse, if a storm happened to rage, it was a death wish.
‘Take it or leave it,’ Haverland said. ‘I can give you back your badge and we can part company having never met. It’s your choice.’
‘I’ll take it,’ Lia said.
16
RAYLAN
‘It is a violation of the rights of an off-worlder,’ the Gorm shouted through its translating device up at the man standing behind a glass screen on the stage. From his position near the auditorium’s side wall, Raylan listened to his plant continue his attack. ‘We are not susceptible to some sickness passed around by your people. We have the right to leave, and continue our business.’
‘Until the cause of the malfunction is discovered, Avar remains under quarantine,’ shouted Governor Tianne of Avar.
‘You pompous fool,’ shouted another one of Raylan’s plants, a Barelaon mercenary. By their very combative demeanour, Barelaons were a perfect incendiary foil to the more diplomatic Gorms, which resembled harmless squares of jelly transported by motorised carts. ‘You deny us travel, yet your ministry was seen dispatching transports just this morning. You are a liar and a thief, and if anyone is to blame for this tragedy, it’s you.’
The dispatch was a lie, but it achieved its purpose. ‘Have that person removed,’ the governor shouted. ‘This meeting will not descend into chaos.’
‘You’re a suppressor of off-worlder rights,’ shouted the Barelaon, as guards pushed through the crowd toward him. ‘Don’t forget who runs your economy.’
As the Barelaon was dragged away, Raylan whispered to an advisor to prepare the man’s bail and safe passage up to the asteroid belt as agreed. Then he turned back to the meeting, delighting in the general chaos that continued to ensue, as one by one, his plants riled up the crowd until Governor Tianne came across as an oppressive dictator suppressing their freedom of movement.
As expected, in the end his stance caved.
‘One transport per day to Boxar,’ he said. ‘Off-worlders only. Papers must be correct, and all passengers will be searched and carefully monitored. And should signs of this affliction appear elsewhere, further quarantines will be established, and severe restrictions will be placed on all off-worlders.’
A general sense of satisfaction came over the crowd, but Raylan wasn’t done. Nudging an advisor toward the front, he suppressed a smile as his man shouted, ‘Tyrant!’ while Governor Tianne was getting down off the stage.
‘We will bide our time,’ he told his assembled advisors, back in his private apartments. ‘I will return to my base to oversee the operation. Fardo Galad will lead a small team to Boxar, but from there you will lay low a few days until you can find further transportation to Daventar, the largest city. You will implement the virus in the charging station network below ground only at Boxar, shortly before departure, then citywide when you reach Daventar. The lag time before discovery will allow you to implement the virus sufficiently. Daventar is a city of a million people. Quarantining it will be impossible and the spread of the virus vast and devastating.’
His advisors began to clap. Raylan nodded, taking in the applause, looking from eye to eye as he did so for any who showed anything less than pure adulation. Diminutive as he was, when surrounded by a group he often felt like a praised child, and it sometimes required a regular death or two just to ensure loyalty. He picked out a couple who weren’t clapping with quite enough enthusiasm for possible torture at a later date.
With the advisors dismissed, he returned to his wallscreen monitor, which currently displayed a local news feed.
He would be lying if he didn’t admit a sense of frustration. The virus should be sweeping the planet by now, but instead, the sudden quarantine appeared to have done its job. He needed to be more careful, or the whole plan could go awry. Like puzzle pieces slipping into place, it only took one mistake to ruin the whole picture. He didn’t yet have the resources to take the entire planet by force, not when militaries from Cable and Feint would be swift to come to Abalon 3’s aid, but soon, if he couple procure the mining land and its rich seams of trioxyglobin, he would have the strength to take the fight to them. And then, the Trill system would be his.
The report on the screen changed. Raylan’s ears pricked up. A body had been found in a tunnel some fifty Earth-miles outside Avar, suggesting an infected Abaloni had got out before the quarantine was set up.
Well, well. Perhaps Governor Tianne and his meddling would prove too late after all, but no matter. Within hours, Fardo Galad would be heading for Boxar with the virus, ready to unleash hell on the rest of the planet.
‘You fools,’ he muttered, stamping his feet, his gnarled hands clenched into fists. ‘You play with me, you play with the firestorms themselves.’
Soon, soon. Soon, Avalon 3’s population would be wiped out, and the trioxyglobin and its riches would fall into his hands.
17
CALADAN
The robot was standing outside the recuperation chamber when Caladan emerged. It immediately snapped a sarcastic salute as though it had been waiting for him to get up for some time. It crossed Caladan�
�s mind to offer some cheap retort, but he noticed the timer on the machine had been set to let him sleep for three days, something only Lianetta would have done, so his thoughts immediately turned to his erratic captain.
‘Where is she?’
Harlan5 bleeped. ‘She followed the chip,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s helpful. Any more light you could shed on the situation?’
‘She’s gone to Abalon 3. She left you a note. While of course it’s supposed to be private, being a simple robot means I’m not really breaking any rules by viewing it. At least so my programming claimed.’
‘No, of course not.’
With Harlan5 in tow, Caladan went to the bridge and read Lia’s note. ‘Did you do as she asked? Did you flush the electrical systems?’
Harlan5 shook his head. ‘My programming suggested that to act on your orders before you had ordered them was an act of mutiny.’
Caladan aimed a kick at Harlan’s leg. ‘Well, get to it. Get those systems working again, you useless piece of junk.’
‘My programming suggests that there is a statistical unlikelihood that the captain will consider sexual relations with you regardless of whether you rescue her or not. That statistic is close to zero percent.’
‘Do you like this planet?’
‘My programming suggests it’s not altogether unpleasant.’
‘Because if you don’t shut up and get on with your work, you might find yourself left on it.’
Harlan5 scuttled out of the way of another kick. ‘My programming suggests that you’re still a little irritable,’ he said, skipping out of the door.
Caladan scowled after the departed robot. It would be a long journey to Abalon 3 without Lia to diffuse the tension between them. Still, first, he had to figure out a way to get there. According to the computer reports, the ship’s sealant system was damaged, meaning any attempt to leave Cable’s atmosphere would see them implode.
He knew nothing about Cable, other than it was flat and boring with relatively interesting entertainments districts in its cities. His job was to drive the ship; Lia was responsible for doing all the dangerous stuff, while Harlan5 kept everything working in the background. She had gone into Seen to seek advice about the chip, but where had she gone?
‘Robot!’ he shouted, then remembered a call button on the dashboard which connected to Harlan5’s circuits. A moment later the droid appeared in the doorway.
‘Can I help?’
‘That tracking chip the captain had, it still working?’
‘Oh, we’re way out of range now.’
‘I don’t mean right now. I mean since we landed. Does it have a record of where she went in the city?’
‘Of course. There is a log on the mainframe computer.’
Caladan, refusing to react to the sarcasm in the robot’s voice, searched through menus and lists of options on the screen. The computer was older than he was, a positive antique by current standards, its voice-automated control long broken, so he was required to do everything using a battered keyboard they had bought in a junk shop back in the Phevius System.
‘Use the search box,’ Harlan said, tapping the screen with a metal finger.
‘I was getting to that,’ Caladan said. ‘My brain doesn’t work as quickly as yours, does it?’
‘My programming tells me that humanity and its various subspecies long ago came to terms with the inherent flaws in its species’ genetic makeup. Brain implants are apparently a popular thing these days.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
Ignoring the robot, which continued to blather on in the background, Caladan pulled up a list of the last movements of Lia before she left the planet. It seemed she had employed a robotics engineer to fix Harlan, but had done nothing for the ship.
‘You wanted to give me a lag, didn’t you?’ he muttered, too quietly for Harlan to hear. ‘You’re trying to protect us while throwing yourself into as much danger as you can find. Well, too late, Captain, dear. We’re a team now.’
‘Would you like me to contact Seen’s spaceport and arrange passage to Abalon 3?’
‘Absolutely not. Much as this ship probably wants to be left to fall to pieces, I’m quite fond of her. And I’m sure Lia is too. Can you pull me up a city map and find out what this place is?’
He pointed at the screen, at a little building Lia had spent some hours in during her first journey into Seen.
‘It’s a small bric-a-brac shop.’
‘A what?’
‘It sells junk.’
‘Owner’s name?’
‘Trina Jansen.’
Caladan started. ‘What? Are you telling me Lia made this a family visit?’
‘It’s possible that they are unrelated.’
‘But unlikely, right?’
‘With the spread of humanity out across the known galaxy, my programming tells me that it is extremely unlikely that two humans with the same family name could co-habit the same city, unless a family unit or arriving together in transit.’
‘So that’s a “no”, right?’
‘Yes.’
Caladan rolled his eyes. ‘Okay. Well, there’s our lead. Let’s go.’
Trina looked up from her desk as the doorbell tinkled. Two figures came inside. The first looked so bizarre that she reached for the blaster hidden under her desk, with a frizzy mane of hair and a beard that looked unusually thin, as though a dog groomer had gone a little hard with the brush. His eyes were cold and grey, his nose a little large for his face, and a loose overall on one side showed he lacked an arm. Behind him came a tall, silver droid, one whose original lustre had faded over the years, obscured somewhat by dozens of scratches and stains on its surface, so that it looked like a very old child’s toy. As she watched, it bumped into a box of old Earth wrist-watches, tripped, and was saved from hitting the floor by colliding with the man’s back.
‘Can I, um, help you gentlemen?’ Trina asked in the common language, standing up, as the man turned to scold the robot.
The man smiled, although much of it was lost behind his beard.
‘I believe you know Lianetta Jansen?’ he said.
Trina frowned. ‘I might.’
‘You have her features,’ the man said. ‘A little more mature, but just as lovely.’
Behind him, the robot said, ‘My programming suggests your attempt at charm won’t work on this woman.’
‘Be quiet.’
‘Tell me how you know her,’ Trina said.
Caladan wiggled the stump of his missing arm and gave an extravagant bow. ‘I’m her boyfriend,’ he said. ‘And this is our servant droid.’
The droid’s facial features contorted into a frown. ‘My programming suggests this woman might prefer a more direct line of address,’ he said. ‘We are the crew from her starship, and we believe she is in grave danger.’
Trina took a step forward. ‘How?’
‘She has gone to Abalon 3 to battle a warlord. We need to fix our ship in order that we can follow.’
The man grinned. ‘I don’t suppose you know of a decent mechanic?’
18
LIA
Life in the rural regions outside Abalon 3’s cities bordered on suicidal. With raging firestorms every few days, making a living off the planet’s surface was impossible. Even so, partially submerged, blocky houses dotted the landscape, some abandoned, others still used, a reminder of the mining operations going on beneath the surface, as everything from individuals and small family units to large companies excavated the mineral-rich lower surface, extracting precious metals, while others bored deep into the earth, tapping ancient subterranean river systems to provide the cities with water.
As often happened in the immediate aftermath of a big storm, the water from the city sprinkler system had begun to evaporate, covering Avar in a fog cloud. Lia flew the Dirt Devil in low to avoid the city’s radar systems, then scouted for abandoned buildings close to the city’s edge.
She found one, an
old excavation company that must have mined its section dry, and flew in low, looking for a way in. Part of a side wall had collapsed, so she lowered her speed and flew the Dirt Devil inside the hangar, leaving it in the farthest corner from the entrance. No firestorm would miss it, but it might escape serious damage if luck was on her side.
Passages and corridors long left doorless led underground, so Lia took a flashlight from the Dirt Devil and headed down. All around her, she found the shell of a mining operation long-abandoned. Old dormitories were carved out of the soft stone walls, and the hulks of old machines sat around collecting dust. The air was too dry for corrosion, so Lia tried a few, hoping to get lucky.
She let out a scream of delight when an old bulldozer stuttered into life.
On foot it was some hours to Avar, but with the old machine trundling along the tunnel, the distance passed quickly. The tunnel, once lit by ceiling lights but now only by the bulldozer’s dim headlights and an occasional blast of the flashlight Lia carried, was smooth and flat, certainly an old subterranean highway. Every few miles, another tunnel led away, with reflective signs announcing different mining operations.
Eventually the tunnel came to a halt at a large barricade. A sign announced in multiple languages that a collapse had rendered the remainder of the tunnel too dangerous. A side tunnel sloped up and curved out of sight, heading for the surface. Lia reluctantly left the bulldozer behind and climbed a set of metal stairs installed for foot passengers.
She emerged on to a sandy plateau a couple of miles out from Avar’s borders. Above her, a blue sky with an orange hue threatened to unleash Armageddon without warning. Lia recorded the coordinates of her location on a tracking computer fitted into her belt, then broke into a run for the city.
She had barely made it when an alarm blared nearby.
