The Horseshoe Nail (The Donn Book 1)

by S Thomson-Hillis

  The ZR lifted and life went very flat and very heavy for a while.

  * * *

  A neo-Autocracy quad, relatively near to Belthan, watched as a UC-II craft nuzzled a tiny frozen moon hidden behind a lilac gas world. Its pilot had quickly located the beacon exactly where Kent had predicted, a floating globe this time, on the eastern pole. The Darts observed as UC-II took readings. It was the fifth beacon that particular pilot had confirmed so the scans were old hat to her. Yet, strangely, even though she checked and everything seemed normal she couldn’t shake off the strange feeling of being watched. It was nothing new. Paranoia was normally a necessary part of the job description for the space-junkies.

  So was survival instinct. She was taut as a bow-string.

  And then the gut snapped.

  Two triads of Darts winked out of gaseous dazzle, flanking the Union vessel. Another pressed down from above. The Darts were so dark they absorbed not reflected light and scanners didn’t pick them up until there was no time to shoot or run or veer away.

  The only way was down, swerving somehow to miss the moon.

  Which was precisely what the Darts wanted and expected her to do.

  Another triad rose from below.

  Protocol was very clear. It was imperative attack reports got home.

  The pilot slammed read on the already primed Enhanced Coded Roll verifying beacon location, shoved in a UC UDC plus visual data, checked viability, and fired it away.

  Shot away, she thought as the green release confirmed, and that makes two of us.

  That done she primed defence and swung her gun-ports round.

  She gave them one hell of a fight.

  * * *

  It was possible that Harris, who himself should’ve still been on the sick-list, had blacked out for a second or two. Whatever happened, he’d blinked and missed it and he opened his eyes to footsteps beating past. A voice shot him as he gasped for air.

  “Harris, what’s going on? She wouldn’t answer. She’s blue.”

  “Sick…” Disengaging the webbing, Tam levered himself upright.

  Macluan punched a flap, grabbed the first aid kit within and charged an auto-hypo with hardly a pause. “Ok, let’s have your wrist, that’s a good girl. Good girl. Give.”

  The good girl opened her eyes, saw the hypo, only the hypo, had always hated hypos; remembered the mechanical that’d prepped her for cryo, spat something foul and hissed. She thrashed, flailing wildly, tried to cuff him, webs strained as she rolled dangerously.

  “Stop it,” snapped Mark. “Wrist. Now.” Ellis punched him.

  Harris leapt forward, grabbed her shoulders, and pinned her down. “I’ve got her.”

  Mark grabbed a thin wrist, whipped it vein up and whacked home the sedative.

  She slumped, still mumbling curses.

  Tam straightened up. It was probably not the best moment, he decided taking in Mark’s stony profile, to make any comment about the Donn’s bedside manner.

  “How long has she been like this?”

  “Since take-off.” Fielding a look like a silver bullet, Harris took a step back and dropped Ellis’ shoulders. “She was groggy taking off, I thought she was just doing a groundie, like that sea-sickness on the tug, but come to think of it she’s not been really right since I’ve known her. I think she must have a weak stomach. Some people do.”

  “A weak stomach?” Mark’s eyes narrowed. “Not Donn. Unlikely. No. Not like this.”

  Harris slowly shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  His sympathetic gaze seared and Mark looked away.

  “Don’t worry, how could you?” Why hadn’t Mark known she was ill? Donn shared, always, and for some reason he was linked with Ellis, so he should’ve. She’d blocked him out. In deep water without a life raft he no idea of how to swim, let alone what stroke to use.

  “Medical cabin is over there.” He nodded dully at the entrance but seemed unable to do more than look at Ellis and hang there, lost and dazed. “I’ve got her. I’ll take her.”

  Tam watched, understanding far more than Macluan imagined.

  Suddenly Ellis opened her eyes.

  Looked straight into Mark’s. The man she did not want to see her like this. Her grip on reality was up in smoke but attack was always defence to Ellis Matheson. “You stay away from me.” Her face contorted. “Bastard. There should’ve been Choice and you forced me.”

  * * *

  It was an hour before noon and Tye Beven snored in his chair, a primordial swamp-slug drenched in stale beer and sweat. He twitched, mumbled and half surfaced, rolling his enormous bulk to and fro in rumpled dreams. Under the draughty, locked, window the fragile woman-child from the Dome, Dyssa, pulled a shawl tightly about her shoulders and rocked. She slept in this room, like a dog in a basket, because despite everything Tye had tried she’d turned out ten-times flakier than any of the others. Not even Sheek could guess what she’d end up doing, though he had a bet laid on a musical replacement for the lost Drudge.

  Dyssa sang.

  Even now, with Tye Beven as her sleeping audience, she hummed to back her ragged rocking. Knees caught under her chin and laced by thin hands, wide-awake on her blanket, she rocked and she hummed. Catch-as-catch-can the catchy tune, but it was all gone, the life she’d lived when she’d learned her songs. It was mist and she couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t understand where it had gone or why. Once, before the Dome, she’d been trained to sing formal stanzas in the theatre. The songs haunted her. The chorus master on Typhin had been a stickler and woe-betide the singer who forgot his lessons. So while Tye snored, Dyssa hummed lost solos and harmonies and, sometimes, she danced intricate steps. Today she hummed a thrilling tune because she’d heard old news on the inn’s secret grapevine.

  Someone had escaped.

  Someone had got away.

  It was nobody of any importance but Tye had been angry all the same.

  You didn’t escape from Tye Beven’s inn, yet someone had. Someone had run.

  The men had been searching for her but she hadn’t been found. Lucky, lucky girl.

  There were rumours about a body. Lucky, lucky girl.

  Only rumours.

  If someone hadn’t escaped Dyssa might have been working in the bar.

  Waitressing confused her, so did the other duties, too many people, too many Tyes, so many echoes. Her melody faltered, shivered and then rose to soar softly. Thank you someone, thank you kindly, you saved me from that horrible job. From that, that, that… It was noisy there, it drowned out the song. The song was important, her very last link with her past.

  Fragile Dyssa, not all there, but she hid a core of reinforced steel. Beven’s conditioning was blunt but cudgelling does not necessarily destroy everything, sometimes it just bruises it or spreads it thin. Chorus girls needed stamina and grit and Dyssa had both in spades. The chorus had to learn new steps and words each night, and dancers are in tune with their bodies, they watch, they notice things. She’d noticed that damaged goods got left alone, people didn’t like girls who rocked and hummed and smiled at nothing, so Dyssa rocked harder, hummed harder, and they looked away and avoided her. Tye gave her potions but she poured them away. Her new life hammered but she used it to nail the old one in place.

  Today she was brave. Someone had escaped, so why not Dyssa?

  Why not now?

  Tye was sleeping. Dyssa knew where he hid the key.

  She moved swiftly on silent toes. Snowflake fingers patted the front lapel of his stained coat melting into his capacious pocket. Her heart shrank because he was revolting.

  He terrified her.

  If he woke and caught her, what would happen?

  Something horrible. It was always something horrible.

  She found the key.

  The room was still, the room was quiet.

  Beven wasn’t snoring.

  Sighing softly she began to back towards the door.

  “Dyssa,” breathed Tye Beven, licking his thi
ck lips. “Wrong key.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Psychologists might have dubbed him a pragmatist but anyone who knew him would have said Soren’s chief characteristic was an inability to take crap sitting down. He retaliated and sometimes won, which was a shame because when he won he forgot the times he didn’t. The longer the odds the more fiercely he fought. If you had a just cause, or better, a lost cause, Soren Nevus was your man. When they’d been shovelled off the shuttle, he took one look at the holding cell and realised the odds were rotten, but it was only when the guards creamed off the healthiest men that he guessed the truth. You see, he’d seen it all before. It was an Autocracy pressgang. It involved neural implants and being dumped on the frontline in a warzone. Autocracy? Oh come on… It had Autocracy stamped all over it and not just a few Tokkers acting up either, real troopers, on a real Autocracy mission. Everyone was going to be compatibility tested and as soon as the Medical mechanicals fitted the head-cage and probes they’d know about Sam and Sam, a Donn, would be better off dead. This operation was smooth, boasting years of careful preparation, and any Autocracy tracks would be well covered. The Union wouldn’t know what was going on until it was far too late. The way Soren saw it he could not bet Sam’s future on somebody else stopping a secret Autocracy uprising, so it was up to him to warn the Union by yelling for help and then to get Sam off Belthan. For a man like Soren there was no real choice. It was the only way to go.

  With his back pressed between a rock and a hard place Soren showed a surprisingly persuasive streak and managed to galvanise others in their cell. So when the guards tried to herd off the test-subjects, expecting resignation and no resistance, they had a shock. In the confusion, with the help of an improvised weapon, a table leg the size and shape of a baseball bat but with about double the weight and clout, Sam and Soren simply slipped away. There were several other men who knew the score amongst the escapees (who held the other three legs to the table) and they also escaped. As he concentrated on finding the communications banks Soren wasn’t sanguine about their chances, but he’d done what he could and that was all a man could do. After he’d sent his message, well, the plan got a bit cloudy for Soren but mostly he guessed he’d find a life raft, or steal a ship and get Sam away from here.

  Under Soren’s inexpert tutelage Sam was speed-learning traditional Donn skills.

  The report so far was could-do-better.

  Sam, ever so slightly boss-eyed, looked at a heavy door as if it was going to bite.

  It was one of five dark doors in a dingy corridor at the junction of a bewildering collection of rather more than five dingy corridors. The Autocracy base on Belthan had been derelict for quite a few years and nobody had sent housekeeping ahead before moving back.

  “Off-world communications?” Soren hissed through non-designer stubble and a cut lip that had given up trying to form a scab. “Are you certain?” It should be about here, he knew, but the area wasn’t nearly populated enough unless the station was seriously undermanned. It quite possibly was, or they wouldn’t’ve got this far in the first place.

  Well, would they?

  “Positive,” said Sam, who definitely wasn’t. Not as bruised and battered as his guardian he was on overdrive. The worst of his shock was rolled up in a tight ball, stashed away until he could afford to deal with it. It was a racial trait if only he’d known it. He felt as if he’d been on Spangle Juice for a week, his eyes were microscopes, his ears tingled like radar and he couldn’t stop twitching. “Positive,” he repeated, absolutely positive he had a hunch it might be. Maybe. Perhaps. “There’s just a guard and an operator inside. Honest.”

  “Honest?” Soren forced an incredulous grin.

  “Well, probably.” Sam shrugged sheepishly.

  It was good enough for Soren. He eased on a few paces in the flickering light from dim glows, gripping his makeshift club in a bloody fist. “Ok, then, off you go, open it.”

  Sam was quickly discovering there was a down-side to being Donn, people thought you were a mystic god and you weren’t, you were just plain you. The locks had been Soren’s idea. He’d said that Sam’s mother had been a genius at manipulating locks and since they were doing the heredity thing, Sam should try it, it might work. The boy sniffed the long sniff of the damned. Heredity had worked twice so far, ok, fine, but was not infallible by a long chalk and there had been several nasty slip-ups resulting in some panicky detours.

  There could be no mistake with this lock. Nervous, Sam dithered until Soren grabbed one flaccid arm and tugged, scraping Sam’s nose against the knobbly control panel.

  “Go on,” he grated. “Open it. We don’t got time for stage-fright. Open it.”

  Sam glared at the lock through watering eyes, hating the older man for forcing the issue and hating himself for being so weak and frightened and unable. “I’ll try.”

  “Today would be handy,” spat Soren, despising the Soren reflected in Sam’s eyes.

  Sam’s life to date had lacked sarcasm quite that pointy. The growl rose from deep in his gut and he slapped his palm against the panel so hard sound bounced. “I’m trying.”

  Soren peered down the passage, tensing for the klaxon or pounding feet that would herald their finale. He caught the echo of scurrying steps and flying guards, far distant as yet, but drawing closer much faster than he liked. His fingers gripped Sam’s stiff shoulder, then clenched till the boy winced. “No time to send out for the manual. Just bloody do it.”

  Sam squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated fiercely on visualising the door swinging wide open and the lock caving in. It’d worked the last time and he didn’t know how to try anything different. I’m doing all I can, he thought darkly, full stop, Soren, ok, all right? Full-bloody-stop. There was nobody to tell him that this type of lock needed more than that and specifically required static energy charged at frequency sub-5. Nor could they tell him he was capable of creating that energy or how to do it. The dumb control laughed at him.

  Suddenly the pounding of Autocracy feet was right round the corner.

  Soren rammed the boy’s shoulder hard against the door and whirled, table leg ready.

  Sam yipped as static spat at him or charged from him...

  The door creaked open. Inside three guards were silhouetted in various stages of shock, flanking a stunned Transmitter Operator who just plain gawped. Soren ducked, dragging Sam away as the guards fired. Shots ricocheted off the wall at drunken angles and zipped back down the passage, causing guards sprinting up the passage to scatter. Everything was smoke and mirrors. Three men firing at shoulder height, a troop behind… The decision took a microsecond. Soren flung Sam away, past the entrance, spinning him round the corner, to land sprawled on the slippery floor scrabbling frantically for a grip that wasn’t there.

  “Don’t let them catch you,” he yelled, dove inside and slammed the door shut.

  Fighting for breath Sam stared at the entrance in stunned disbelief.

  Shots pinged sparks off the floor by his shoulder. He jack-knifed and bolted.

  * * *

  Eban Krystie faced the Vista-View from the dais on Imperious’ bridge his eyes sweeping over a train of stars, constellations and systems at peace because of his fleet and his beliefs in the Union he had helped establish. He looked at his creation and saw it marred by a whopping big Emir Carolli shaped stain. Like Soren, Krystie was incapable of taking crap but he was far better at playing the odds. He was doing his sums. After checking a subtotal, he threw in some applied calculus and finally a personal theory on the veracity of Emir Carolli. The conclusion made him want to spit as he stirred in the High Council’s possible reaction to any precipitate action. He adjusted. He stared at stars through the View. He calculated...

  Timmis, waiting at his elbow, had just told him they’d lost a UC-II on the beacon rim.

  Blown to shrapnel by mysterious black ships.

  Black ships. Triads too. Krystie cursed, soft and low and rhythmic, but inside.

  He fact
ored lost UC-II pilots and circumstances into an emergent algorithm.

  There was no way he was going to lose men like that.

  The High Council consisted of good people who had formulated the very basis of Union rule and Carolli was playing them for fools. The Belthan intervention felt like a direct challenge and Eban Krystie was a rat trapped in a maze of his own statutes, yet trapped rats fight back. It was a game, he realised with cold clarity, nothing more than a game. A quiet chat with old friends on the Council might have been useful, particularly Yemen Stillito, a Presidential Representative and fellow Typhion. During the chaotic period just before the fall of Typhin, Stillito had suspected Carolli to be a double-agent, but there had never been enough hard evidence. No useful through-windows, enabling instant speech with a fixed point, or even smaller, winding snake-windows were currently available.

  There was an intangible link between Belthan and Harth Norn.

  It dangled just out of reach, so close a catch it made Krystie tingle...

  Carolli had always been a gamer. Games... Now there was a notion...

  “Timmis!” he barked, forgetting the man was at his elbow.

  “Sir?” Timmis knew enough not to duck.

  “Get Commodore Stanson and General WuVane over here stat.” Krystie smiled under his beard and it wasn’t a nice mother’s-boy smile. His voice was calm and quiet. “Tell them it’s time for those active drills they applied for in Second III. War Games file. Open it.”

  Timmis nodded once, saluted neatly and returned to his post.

  Give a job to Timmis and it was as good as done. The Admiral relaxed.

  The cavalry should soon be galloping over the rise, and along with Terrin Stanson and his high-strung flyboys and WuVane’s hulking great ground hogs. Imperious wasn’t going to be the most comfortable billet in the fleet for a while, it was going to get crowded. The Admiral swung to watch Timmis work, his glance hit Kent. Silly woman could even sit to attention, how long could her spine could take the strain? Forever, if it paid her?