The Horseshoe Nail (The Donn Book 1)

by S Thomson-Hillis

  Soren choked on hot coffee he couldn’t taste.

  A dull chord thrummed in his head, ta-dah…

  Sam stabbed the screen with a grubby finger. “See?” he crowed, “I told you so. It is an artificial pattern, the rings are staged concentrically and the epicentre is right there. Now who’s a dreamer? We’re on an artificial satellite, the quakes are engines, aren’t they?”

  Now that was plain ridiculous. Artificial didn’t mean run by an engine, and Soren had not foreseen conclusions so ludicrous. Yet if Sam said it was an engine then probably there was some kind of underground power system. After all they had to have shunted the moons into place somehow, hadn’t they? Hadn’t ‘they’ been the Autocracy originally? Belthan Six’s authorities denied it to the hilt, the bastards, but Soren had never trusted them. An inner voice screamed, it doesn’t matter, it had to happen in the end, you can cope, you always do. But he couldn’t, not any more. Sam was going too fast for him now. Sam was growing up.

  There was the Hannah situation to be sorted too, before matters went too far.

  “What’s going on?” asked Sam, deep in thought. “Do they know?”

  “Yes,” Nevus owned heavily. “They have to know and I believe you’re right, Sam.” A pause lasting approximately Sam’s lifetime staggered past as he drew a cold breath. “But then you have to be right, you’ve no choice. There is no one left alive can be more right.”

  “Huh?” Sam twisted to stare up into his guardian’s face. It wasn’t like Soren to give in without a fight and he sounded strange, sombre as if he was about to pronounce something.

  Protecting someone from their nature is no easy task.

  When Soren Nevus looked into his future he saw loneliness and bereavement but that was nothing compared with what he saw for Sam. Sam’s future terrified him.

  Yet it couldn’t be put off any longer and the boy had every right to know.

  “We need to have a talk,” he said heavily. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

  Chapter Ten

  It wasn’t quite raining but it was far from dry. It was dark, wet, cold and the pessimistic weather exactly matched HStJ Jenson’s mood, which hadn’t been optimistic to start with. Sheltering under the smart, sculpted canopy of the Aqua-cat hired for what he suspected was twice its worth, he let fly a deep sigh, crossed his arms and then his ankles more comfortably, propped his shoulders against the bulk to avoid drips; sighed again. “He’s late,” Jenson informed the disinterested toes of his boots. “Sorry, pardon me, very late.”

  They didn’t answer so Jenson fell to bemoaning the lack of stars, which were swallowed in thick clouds. Jenson was planet-born, a farm-boy who’d lost his family and home in the wars, but he was spacer by nature and stars beckoned, lured him, comforted him, dammit, he liked stars. Down here on Harth Norn’s restless surface, everything was murky, muffled and, no matter what, all he could smell was the salt tang of ocean and bad fish. Pulling his hat down over his nose, he shut his eyes against the depressing onslaught of a wet seaside night on a dingy harbour and dug his chin into the turn up collar of his wet-coat.

  By the gates of the dilapidated warehouses the dejected pier was choked by heaps of driftwood and discarded nets. There, two people watched every move Jenson didn’t make.

  “Look at that,” crowed Ellis. “As per ticket. Aqua-cat. Genuine Grade A transport practically hanging out an invitation. How thoughtful. Shame he won’t be able to join us.”

  “Don’t you have any conscience?” sighed Tam Harris. “Duty-driver, poor sod.”

  “No,” she decided, running a thumb over the ten-spot in her pocket and wistfully recalling silver eyes. Ellis was too far gone for subtle. Guns, pistols or stun, were not a first choice for a Donn but she’d learned to grab any port in a storm and was a pretty fair shot.

  Harris sensed trouble brewing. “Gentle,” he cautioned. “Softly, softly.”

  “Don’t panic, Tam, the pilot shall live.” Old habits died hard. She’d been brought up to respect life, it was a big part of Donn ethics and Ellis had been strictly raised. “Ok,” she said, sliding the gun out and easing the trigger. “Off you trot. Keep him ever-so busy.”

  Harris hesitated for less than a second. She’d nursed him back to health, cheerfully, sensibly and, he guessed, at sizeable personal risk even when it looked as if their roles should have been reversed. He’d rarely seen a woman still upright who had been so badly beaten, but she’d never told him who’d inflicted the damage or why. She never complained. Ellis was good news. Tam liked her but he wasn’t entirely sure about the sharp edges he sensed.

  “You sure you’ll be able to make that shot at this range?”

  “Yes.” Near as she could tell, anyway. “Trust me.”

  Well, that was the trick, wasn’t it?

  * * *

  Diplomatic missions were never popular and this one was the pits. Emir Carolli was not popular with the crew of his sleek XT-1. They’d learned to dread his autocratic and random demands to leap in and out of the Bylanes like a lunatic yo-yo. An alarm blared and the Captain threw a pointed gaze at his second-in-command. It was his turn to answer and categorically beneath a Captain, even a very new Captain, especially when he’d done it last time. Number Two was an older hand (by nearly a year) and ignored him. Swearing under his breath the Captain gave up, glowered ferociously at the array and stabbed the link.

  “Sir?” he said smoothly.

  “I have a new objective,” announced Carolli’s disembodied tones.

  How exciting, that made eleven in the last two days. Each time they dropped out of the Bylanes they’d deployed those power hungry interceptor nets and hung around while random sounding signals flashed. If Carolli hadn’t been part of the Union High Council, the crew might’ve wondered just what the hell was going on. They might’ve got suspicious about anybody who was playing tag with the outer rim systems and ex-Autocracy way-stations.

  “You may log it as the final destination.”

  The Captain’s brows soared. “Standing by, sir?”

  “Belthan System. Quadrant 667/19.”

  “Belthan?”

  “Belthan. Quadrant 667/19,” repeated Carolli. “What is the calculated ETA?”

  Number Two was way ahead and wobbled a hand. “Ten days?”

  “Approximately ten days, sir,” parroted the Captain dutifully.

  “Eight,” snapped the Baron and cut contact.

  “I won that one,” said Number Two serenely. “Told you it’d be Belthan.”

  * * *

  In the seclusion of his cabin, Emir Carolli checked the chart displaying his recent journey, which was far from random, and wound a loop through strategic contact points proximate to derelict Autocracy way-stations or space-docks.

  He’d always planned to end up near Belthan.

  As the ship began to thrum into life, he reached for his cane and flipped open the hollow head. Crack-Crystal glowed active and he smiled. It was illegal to possess it, let alone use it, and he adored handling something so rare and so special. It made him feel rare and special and in control, it made him righteous. But communication wasn’t his aim this time, just gloating, and snapping it shut, he flipped open the cavity underneath it, deftly extracting the treasured contents. A thick intaglio disc that he held lovingly up to the light.

  A key.

  It glowed and glimmered, flirting with shadows.

  Remember.

  Remember the lock, remember the keyhole.

  Remember the jail; remember the prisoner and the cause.

  Double-lock, twin keys.

  Both keys, if worked simultaneously, activated Crystal-fundament-nodes that had to be exactly aligned to release the thing trapped in Harth Norn’s Dome. Every so often Carolli got nervous and checked to make sure it was real. His work on that project had been a dangerous serendipity and this was his reward. His future heaven. He’d stolen it from his master’s wrecked desk as the Typhin base was bombed. It was the key to abs
olute power.

  Ellis Matheson would’ve recognised the disc immediately.

  She wore its twin about her neck on a leather thong made from bootlaces.

  * * *

  In the tank at the heart of the Dome, perhaps the strange creature behind the double-lock felt the echo of Carolli’s gloating for it wallowed in its womb, growling. The time was coming. Countdown had commenced, the allies were mustering in bases stolen by the Union from the thing’s not-so-long-dead masters. The path to ultimate glory was being readied.

  Or so it had been told by Carolli. It wasn’t altogether sure it believed him.

  It was never sure of Baron Carolli. Yet it had no choice but to deal with him.

  For now.

  * * *

  Waking up was not pleasant and dirt in his nose triggered memory the hard way.

  Something sharp prodded Mark in the ribs. “I’d wake up easy if I was wise.”

  “I’m awake,” Mark croaked and rolled over, sitting up. Something hard whacked his temple and he crashed back down. A second later pain turned into a rifle nozzle.

  “I said wake up not get up. Stay down,” advised a bald man with black rat’s eyes.

  It wasn’t a rifle. Mark froze. Memory helter-skeltered back to the Autocracy purges on Algezeal when a starving ten-year old had been picked up by the Genta Prime prodders sent to rake the streets for Donn survivors. The weapon was an Autocracy streamer. Double barrelled hell. The first barrel fired a sigma-stream shutting down Donn brain-waves and the second shot a normal laser adjusted to disable, maim or cut you down like a rabid dog.

  The muzzle caught his cheekbone, shoving his face down and away from Minon.

  “Look over there. I don’t want to see your eyes. Where’s the girl? Where is she?”

  “The girl hit and ran,” Mark assured the dusty corner. “I don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer,” decided Minon and fired the sigma-beam.

  Mark’s life skidded into chaos, life strobed, retched and puked.

  With a loud crash, the door slammed heavily against the wall.

  Words shimmied in and out, until they finally started to make sense. Hearing, Mark seemed to recall, was always the last sense to be lost. Grabbing hold, he hung on grimly.

  “The other one’s down at the Nicksies Wharf. Got an off-island Aqua-cat.”

  Minon stared at the newcomer, obviously calculating.

  Macluan had fallen back awkwardly on his side but if they’d only keep talking he might be able to reach his ten-spot unseen... The sigma-effect would wear off, then...

  “Did you find the Drudge yet?” barked Dandy.

  There was silence which probably meant no. Mark’s fingers brushed an empty holster. He didn’t understand at first, and then bit back a moan. She’d stolen his stunner.

  Minon nodded, glanced down, noticed the hand, fired and Mark’s world winked out.

  Not dead but disabled. Despite Carolli’s orders, Minon wondered if this Donn might be useful. There was the other man and the girl to find, and there were ways of making him play nice. Carolli had been extremely thorough in his instructions on how to deal with Donn.

  “Reel in the other one too,” ordered Minon briskly. “Take this one back down the road and shove him in the hut. Take good care of him. Remember what I told you.”

  * * *

  “Hey there, brother, how’re y’doing?”

  Jenson prised opened an eye as unsteady footsteps drummed up the gangway.

  “You got a light?” A battered and soggy Snoo-stick was waved hopefully under his squirming nostrils. “‘S my last, my very last. We’ll share. I’d kill for a light.”

  It was a drunk, sorry, another drunk and the pilot groaned. The docks were heaving with drunks. Some drunks love the whole world, they have abundant joy to share and they don’t need invitations. They are also invariably equipped with long and boring life-stories that ended in maudlin claims to life-long friendship of the embarrassing variety. Staggering clumsily across the deck, only just upright, the idiot man slumped beside Jenson.

  Who unwound ready to heave the newcomer unceremoniously off his patch.

  And discovered that some drunks hug you tight, so you just can’t move a muscle.

  * * *

  Aiming when sick to your core isn’t as easy as it could be.

  Focusing in the dark and murk when dizzy? Not easy.

  Picking her way to a position where she could get a clear shot at Jenson but miss Tam (who was a big man), Ellis stepped unwarily back, stumbled on a cobble and ricked her ankle. “There’s no need to cuddle him, you’re in the way,” she moaned in frustration.

  She raised Mark’s ten-spot, again, to retake a calculated aim.

  Suddenly she stopped, head cocked, eyes staring inwards, every nerve on red alert

  Harris and Ellis weren’t the only ones interested in Jenson that night.

  Fast footsteps swung down the narrow alley, through the packed bays, behind.

  Her first shot skinned Harris’ cheek as it caught Jenson full on.

  She spun, fired a salvo up the dark dock alley and leapt for the Aqua-cat.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sam sat on the floor and Soren sat in his usual chair by the heater.

  The boy was a satellite booted out of orbit, no longer subject to gravity, bouncing further away from everything meaningful, security, safety, identity. Even while he pleaded, his heart recognised the truth of Soren’s incredible tale. Despite that, he fought with a typically blind, blunt, single-minded stubbornness. When logic ran out he fired abuse like a cannon. Soren took the barrage, sucking it up like a sponge. That was the worst bit, the times when Soren should’ve grounded Sam for life but just sat and looked at him with the same expression he’d worn when he’d put the old dog to sleep. That was when the nightmare became an avalanche and made Sam into a hapless snowball, zigging and zagging into nothing. Soren had been his haven and his rock and Soren wasn’t there. Soren was a stranger.

  “I don’t know how to be Donn. Minders are dead. What do I do? How do I do it? I look human,” he appealed wildly. “I think human so I am human. I eat, sleep and live human. I’m just a bit of a dreamer. You always said that. You’ve said that all my life.”

  “Both your parents were full-blood,” Soren repeated. “You’re Donn.”

  The older man was stiff and blue, he had administered a death sentence to his life with Sam and the countershock was suicide. Sam was gaining a future, reclaiming his heritage, but he had been Soren’s life and Nevus had no idea what he would do without Sam. “You were left with me when the Autocracy ran the last of the Donn refugees off the shelters on Saracen,” he intoned the words like the last funeral rites, “by your mother…”

  If he shut his eyes, the scene replayed, a tasty, a feely; a weepy. The strained faces of Sam’s parents as Tray, Sam’s mother, pleaded with Soren. “We can’t take him, he’s too young, too strong; he’d give us all away without knowing anything. The prodders use bio-grades to ream the ships, and streamers, they shoot sigma waves. We can hide but we can’t hide him, we have the baby to shield, she’s not old enough, we can’t leave Yso behind.”

  Dazed, Soren had asked where to send Sam when it was safe. Tray had simply shaken her head and murmured that Sam was his own best clue. When the time came he would find his own way and they would be waiting. Their goal, known only as Sanctuary, was at the end of a complex underground railroad. Contacts knew only their own stage and the next, and nobody knew the final destination. Kim Mavyn, Sam’s father, had almost died getting them a contact, a boarding pass and place. The Autocracy was dying spitefully and its hatred of the Donn was savage. All over the galaxy they’d fled, were fleeing, tortured or dead. It had only been a matter of time before the tiny outpost on Saracen was targeted. The Donn had already split into factions, those who spent every ounce of their power fighting back, and the Homers, pacifists unable to tolerate violence. The Homers believed that to survive they had to withdraw to Sa
nctuary and leave war behind. They were going home, hence the term Homers, to their Homeworld at the end of the Sanctuary trail. Tray and Kim were among the last and behind them the window closed. So drifter Soren Nevus gained a purpose and Sam got a new chance at life because Soren had never been able to resist Tray Endelyon.

  It was that simple.

  And that complicated.

  Resigning himself to her difference, and her indifference once she had met and Identified Kim as her partner, had seared Soren’s soul and Sam was a little piece of Tray that Soren could selfishly keep close. Running from Saracen, Soren had simply kept on the move. When, finally, the last shreds of the Autocracy had been forced into surrender and the painful Tokker mop-up had begun, Soren followed a dream to the Belthan system where land was cheap and there were no questions only the initial aptitude tests. Any signs Sam showed of the parapsychic abilities separating the Donn from their human cousins had been ruthlessly quashed. Up to now it had never struck Soren that by doing that he could stunt the boy’s nature. He’d just done his best to keep them safe and out from under authority’s nose. It was too late now. And telling Sam the truth wasn’t sweet release it was a miserable torture.

  “We’ve been through this already,” Soren burst out. “I can’t tell you anything more because I don’t know anything more. It’s the plain, blunt truth, you should know that, you above all people. You can smell a lie on me. So now you know why. It’s what you are.”

  Partly, yes, but, again, most of Sam was sheer bloody-minded obstinate.

  Tempered with just a smit of relentless guile. “If I’m not human how come Hannah Morlstin and I can... you-know?” Soren was still a parent figure, despite the revelations, and sharing a social/love-life with a parent was always going to be awkward. Sam stopped a blush with a squirm and his face hardened. It would be worth it. It was common knowledge, basic Xenobiology, that it was pretty near impossible for two disparate races to you-know.