The Horseshoe Nail (The Donn Book 1)

by S Thomson-Hillis

  “Yes, I am,” agreed Mark, “and you’re Sam.” He nodded at the pod. “Rough, aren’t they? If you could see what they were before you got in, you never would, would you?” Stooping, he picked up a bundle lying at his feet and tossed it over. “This is for you.”

  Sam watched the pack land without attempting to catch it. “What is it?”

  “Clothes. You’ll need them and if we can find a stream, you’d best have a dip or no one’ll ever survive downwind.” Macluan’s nose wrinkled. “I apologise in advance, they don’t go in for hanging out laundry on Harth Norn and I didn’t have time to be picky.”

  The boy did nothing and Mark stepped forward. “Look, I’m sorry, I know you’re shaky but we have to leave.” And there was the ruthless steel ribbing the soft voice.

  Wobbly knees buckled as Sam tried to move; he stumbled, staggered and would have fallen again. A strong hand grabbed his arm, planting him more or less upright. There was steel in the grip as well as the voice but when your legs are made of mashed potato nothing works. Knees together, ankles apart, Sam toppled onto all fours, stopping the forward roll with the flat of his hands. Nose to earth, he panted, flinging a filthy look at the pod.

  “I think something shot at me.”

  The world swirled like wine in a glass and he heard rather than saw retreating steps as Mark went over to examine the scoring, bending to touch the ragged dent.

  “I think you’re right,” he agreed grimly. “So it’s begun.” Whirling, he reached out and tugged Sam to his feet, none too gently. “Come on, we’re in a hurry. I’m expecting some very unfriendly visitors at any second and you need to be togged up in your party best.”

  “Visitors?”

  “You came down noisily and nearer population than I planned. I shouldn’t think they’re looking specifically for us but this landing wasn’t invisible and will be investigated. In a them-and-us situation they are definitely them.” Bewildered brown eyes, one of which was slitted shut and green and puffy and underlined in red and blue, blinked hopelessly and Mark rapidly translated. “Us good, them bad. We don’t want them to find us. Ok? Right?”

  “Ok.” That seemed fairly straightforward. “Why do I have to get changed?”

  “Apart from being a bad smell on legs?”

  “Sorry,” snarled Sam. “Someone ordered me to say in the pod and it didn’t have a built in fresher. Before that I was too busy surviving on Belthan for regular baths.”

  Mark tutted, exasperated. “We have a date at a local inn and we’re late.”

  * * *

  Sheek was indulging his favourite pass-time, people watching. Every so often he twiddled his UT to hone in on a conversation that looked potentially interesting but none of them were. Trade wasn’t so good. Folk were nervy and it felt as if someone was constantly running a wet finger across the rim of a glass. Even Tye was twitchy. He’d stumped all the way downstairs earlier on to warn Sheek to tread light. Talk about stating the obvious; Sheek wasn’t the Giag to sit on a volcano and wonder what was rumbling. Water police had closed the ports with such short notice that people had been marooned. Simultaneously, and oh what a coincidence, inter-island communications had gone down. The Authorities claimed a server fault was under repair but that was crap, it was all down to the Union’s War Games. Sheek had heard Groundhogs were at the Spaceport, standing by to help out if needed. Yeah right. Sheek had been a Groundhog until he’d palmed enough cash to buy out his commission. It hadn’t suited him, and had only been one of many means to many ends but he knew the score. Two and two didn’t add up and once the Union moved in they rarely moved on.

  So perhaps it was time to go.

  Dandy Minon held court in a corner by the main entrance providing his favourite floorshow, though sadly just out of range. Not for the first time Sheek wondered if Minon had either guessed or managed to trace his UT’s modification because he always ended up somewhere Sheek couldn’t eavesdrop and those fake Shiny Ears had more uses than one. When he leaned forward slightly, Sheek glimpsed a double-barrelled rifle hidden under his coat that looked like serious Autocracy hardware. Tye took a pretty liberal attitude to weaponry, which sharpened radically if it got used, especially on fixtures and fittings, but Sheek wasn’t keen. Crane as he might, he couldn’t get a good square look at that rifle. The shape and size reminded him of when he’d worked with the Prodders clearing out Donn refugees on Saracen. He hoped not, streamers were nasty, didn’t matter which species.

  Minon sat in solitary state receiving friends, some of whom were foolish enough to march in and out in pairs, and the way he was playing with that ear-piece of his was a downright disgrace to espionage. It was in a different ear tonight, and Sheek noticed burns on his cheek and neck. Had he blown one? That’d hurt. Sheek smirked. If Minon was running a business out of Tye’s he owed them rent, or rather he owed Sheek rent because Beven should know better than to lift his eye off the main game. Whatever was going on, Minon was growing steadily more morose. It might, thought the Giag, be a good moment for a quiet chat.

  “Excuse me?”

  Sheek looked up quickly, smelling new customers. Then he looked closer. Not so new, one of them looked familiar, something about the lean, hawk-nosed face. But it was the dark man who ordered and he was definitely a stranger, Sheek would have recognised him in a trice. He looked like a native Scolosian and they didn’t often turn up. Sheek spotted a formal Scolosian mourning plait, so yep, a native Scolosian and a widower of two maybe three years. He wouldn’t cut that tail till he’d nabbed himself another lady. Scolosians stuck to their traditions like glue no matter how far away from home they roamed.

  Setting out the drinks he tapped in the tally. “Haven’t seen you around here before,” he opened, ever mine genial host. “Waterway embargo, is it? Got a place to stay?”

  “Not here, thanks.” Hawk-nose slung a credit bar onto the counter and swung his back to the Giag to lean his elbows on the bar and look out across the room. No call to be rude and Sheek’s pebble eyes hardened. Cash tendered was thumb-tag bar which was good coin, but the Giag took his time as he flecked the bar for forgery, and miscounted the small change.

  “Wasn’t that a tenster?” It was Mr Scolos, all smiling amiability until you looked into his eyes. Scolosians could be tediously straight-laced about debts and money.

  “Oh,” Sheek grunted cheerfully, “sorry, my mistake.”

  “No worries. It must be hard to keep track when you’re so busy.”

  “It gets hectic,” admitted Sheek, unerringly detecting sarcasm. “It’ll hot up in an hour or so, with the entertainment. We have a singer on tonight who’ll pop your clogs.”

  It was true enough. Dyssa was good, her voice haunting as well as haunted.

  Hawk-nose flicked a scornful look at the stage and snorted.

  That was just plain disrespect. Sheek had a barman’s eyes for faces and a Giagosian memory for names, between the two talents he rarely made a mistake and abruptly light dawned. If he was right Mr Hawk-nose had last been sighted at table twenty-three waiting for a blonde friend who’d ditched him for a date with the Drudge. He’d left alone round about the same time Minon had been spotted shunting the Drudge down the back stairs. Sheek never had seen what happened to his fair-headed mate. Suddenly he wondered.

  Mr Scolos was watching the barkeeper shrewdly.

  The Giag hastily made good the change with a muttered apology. “You want a table?”

  “Would be nice to relax,” admitted the Scolosian.

  “I’ll find you a table, there’s a bit of a queue, I’ll jump you up it,” offered Sheek.

  It was one way of making sure they sat in one of his UT’s sweet-spots.

  * * *

  Mark and Sam threaded their way through the forest towards a track that aspired to be one of Harth Norn’s main thoroughfares. Macluan wasn’t insane enough to walk out in the open with Sam in tow but it was a decent guide if they kept to its right. Sam marched like a very happy and bouncy robot. After he
’d got dressed, Mark had insisted he eat some rations, then sprung the pod’s emergency medical kit, deftly located one of the hypo-packs, ignored all feeble protests and administered painkillers and sedatives. The rations had plugged a hole and Sam’s life improved, though there was something weird in the shots. He couldn’t feel his head or his legs but the drippy nose had dried up and sometimes he could see straight.

  “Why did they fire on me?” he asked after a while.

  Macluan didn’t answer. Nobody was doing what they should be, where they should be, life was a disaster, but that seemed to be about par for the course. Much of what he’d done so far was damage limitation but the damage wasn’t staying limited for long enough for him to make any headway. Babysitting wasn’t his thing and Sam was definitely not fit for any inn, especially Tye Beven’s. The boy might have been partially concussed before the pod launched, even before being fired on, and given a double-whammy the painkiller could misfire. The standard sedative/painkiller in those pod-kits was Phytomine and too much could be bad news. Drugs were never easy for a Donn. He shrugged off creeping guilt.

  “Why did they fire on me?” Sam repeated doggedly, loudly enough to make Macluan cringe. “You said you’d told your people what we planned and to let the pod go.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think it was us. I don’t know what happened, there was no reason to jettison a pod and they’d’ve known that. Possibly it was just a nervous twitch.”

  “You said pods blew all the time and they wouldn’t bother.”

  Yes, he had hadn’t he? At the time Mark had more or less believed it too, which just went to show what could happen when life chose to take a crap on your head. “Keep your voice down. Remember what I told you. Them and us? We don’t want to meet them.”

  They managed another five hundred metres in decent order.

  “I’ve never been to a tavern,” announced Sam conversationally. “What’s it like?”

  Murder, thought Mark, was that an option? Swinging on a pin he grabbed Sam’s shoulders, trying to hold spinning eyes completely unable to focus. “Listen to me. Sam?” He gave the slack shoulders a light shake. “After this there will be no more talking, yes?”

  Sam did his best to nod encouragingly and look steadfast. Neither worked.

  “We wouldn’t be going to the inn if I had a choice, and I need you to do exactly what I say.” If not murder, what about hogtying and dumping the boy until he could be collected and taken straight to the ZR? There wasn’t a jail handy and without one Sam was as likely to stay put as Ellis. Whichever way the dice rolled, they were screwed. “I’m going to introduce you to two men...” For a moment he glazed, imagining Jenson’s reaction. “Two men,” he repeated firmly, “who will look after you. It’s going to be extremely risky, right?”

  “I understand,” said Sam. “I’m not stupid.” Nor deliberately obtuse. Bits buzzed, bits ached, bits were falling off and all of him shook. A stray fact surfaced. “Who else?”

  “What?”

  “Who else? You’re taking me to the inn to meet two men who have a ship to get us off planet, I understand, that’s no problem, but who else? Who else is there? I know somebody is, and you’re more worried about them than you are about anything else.”

  Floored, Mark blurted out the simple truth. “Her name’s Ellis.”

  “Ellis,” mumbled Sam, nodding wisely. “What is she?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Only, my guardian was human, I thought I was,” Sam explained slowly. “Soren didn’t know much about the Ritual but he said that it wouldn’t work with my girlfriend because she was human. I don’t think Hannah got off Belthan, I looked but she wasn’t on the wheel. I did look, even though I knew it wouldn’t...” Soren was dead, Sam had to forget Hannah, who was dead or better off dead, and this cold, fey stranger was all he’d got in exchange for a lifetime of memories. “I’m sorry,” he ended desperately. “Sorry.”

  “I was brought up by humans too.” Sam was a loose cannon, he could get them all killed or captured but that changed nothing. He was still a boy who’d been through a tough time. Alone. Like Mark. “It’s not easy for people like us, Sam, yes, Ellis is Donn.”

  “I thought I was on my own. Soren said I could be the last.”

  “They told me that too.”

  The damp night was very dark, lots of rustles, lots of bustles, lots of shadows.

  For a moment their eyes met. “There’s someone behind us,” breathed Sam.

  I know.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  At the heart of the Dome immediately behind the double-lock, there was a dusty room, like a square flight-deck, housing a large and complex bank of instruments. It was the antechamber fronting the mind’s cage. The wheels closed in and as they came so their proximity was detected and sleeping systems revived. From space, as had always been planned, they would sound the final reveille as they triggered the beacon’s rolling systems, but to work properly planetary infrastructure also had to be prepared to receive. On-planet diagnostic tests kick-started Domes into pre-revivification. Bright in the fusty dark, a star blazed as a light went on, then another, and dust-motes woofed in spirals, equipment banks shuddered and growled and ground. In strict sequence each system was brushed with resonance, each interface thrilled with life, jumping before sinking back into inactivity.

  Fifty beacon receivers received a power jolt.

  Only thirteen external beacons responded with a series of thumping pulses.

  Three of those decayed during the response phase.

  Only nine beacon receivers remained functional to any degree.

  Signals flashed across Harth Norn, a serial alarm call designed to stagger the stress of the awakening and prepare the infrastructure. Dotted across islands nine Domes shook, preparing to revive their cargo. Violent tremors and pre-quakes erupted in many areas, including Long Island’s Spaceport. Bedlam ensued as land caved in, sink-holes formed and terrified victims fled. The Domes shook and creaked as giant pylons shuddered. Cryogenic capsules on the top levels of Beven’s Dome had shed their load but underneath automatic revivification systems growled, pulses quickened and frozen survivors thrashed restlessly in their Introven induced coma. In other containers electrodes fell from dry sockets and empty skulls rattled, dropped and smashed. Loose suction-feeders probed for atrophied synapses, neural nets malfunctioned and went fttzzzp while frozen hunks of dead meat began to thaw.

  The test-call resonated in every Domer head. None could be entirely freed.

  Nothing could erase the Autocracy stain.

  The newly woken Dome troops, like the first Seven Sisters’ crew, had been intended for a pre-programmed mission, their leaders implanted with Crack-Crystal, but the Autocracy had run out of credit and few made the upgrade. Instead troop-programming depended on the neural-infiltration of Introven B, a largely untested prototype. Each Dome should have spewed hundreds, ready instilled with orders and weapons, as well as their commanders.

  Not so. Total wastage was estimated at seventy-nine percent.

  The local test was done.

  Result unsatisfactory.

  * * *

  On her way to warn Tam, high on the hill above the inn, Ellis staggered and fell, toppling down the slight slope over unforgiving turf, ending up in a foetal ball. She was a fish, gagging on air. Imperious’ medics had gouged out Introven’s worst lesions but some scars remained like the vengeful ghosts of an amputated limb. Rolling onto her back, she lay quiet, panting and faint, until her throbbing pulse righted, then knelt up on the harsh hill and faced the origin of the invisible signal. It was the Dome though she could not see it.

  The Dome was inevitable.

  It would end there for her, she guessed, it would end where it had begun.

  But would it end well?

  * * *

  Sheek plonked the jug down under Minon’s nose. A tactical freebie, say thank you Dandy, not that Sheek expected anything back. “Have you seen what’s dragged in tonigh
t?”

  “What?” Dandy Minon was steeling himself to report no key and a lost ZR to a boss who expected more and who was due to make a personal appearance. All he had to show Carolli was two exhausted men with no idea what had happened. He smelled Donn handiwork hence his tight grip on his streamer. The Glo-white had been deserted, with its security-functions active, but the crash had totalled Nicksies base and forced him to use Beven’s as a command centre. It was too obvious, too soon, even Dandy realised that, but close Union presence restricted him to shadow short-range communications and his choice of suitable muster-points was limited. He’d just heard about the survival pod, ditto empty. His men were combing the area but returned dirty big zilches. No ship. No pilot. No girl, no key.

  Minon did not need Sheek getting in the way.

  “Over there.” Sheek jerked a thumb to where Jenson and Harris were sitting at the table he’d found for them. “They come back for a second helping, yeah?”

  “What are you babbling about, Greenie?”

  “See the guy with the nose? Swapping tales with the dark Scolosian with the widower’s plait?” Greenie? Greenie? Oh stupid, stupid, Minon, that was not wise.

  Dandy peered. A few heads bobbed in the way. Then Jenson suddenly turned to make a remark to Harris and Minon’s jaw clenched. His heart stopped, jump-started, thudded.

  “Wasn’t he here the night we lost the Drudge?” pressed Sheek.

  “I remember,” Dandy murmured. “He got away.”

  “You reckon he’s carted Mr Scolos in for a repeat performance?” Got away?

  Minon couldn’t believe his luck.

  He absently rubbed his scorched and itching earlobe. “I owe you one, Sheek.”

  “Yes,” nodded Sheek affably. “You do, you do, but don’t you worry, it’ll keep.”

  * * *

  Sam bleared down at the two unconscious men at their feet. “What did you do?”

  Because he knew, oh how he knew, that he hadn’t even had time to blink.

  “Later. It’s an old trick, one of the oldest in the book. Neither was particularly fond of darkness and I used that to confuse them.” Then two swift neck pinches from behind, because Mark never played silly games when he could make it quick. He wiped the heels of his hands down his coat, breathing evenly until his muscles unknotted, his heart stopped racing and the dark night was once again only a dark night. Just a night, it was just another mission.