The Horseshoe Nail (The Donn Book 1)

by S Thomson-Hillis

  “You will personally ensure that nothing either enters or leaves my poor Dome, won’t you?” he said, gesturing the man aside to let him board. “I can rely on you, can’t I?”

  In the grey light, Minon was haggard and sallow but his eyes snapped proudly.

  “Sir.” Then doubt struck. “Do you think they’ll get out?”

  “No,” and he didn’t either, “but I’d wait inside the entrance just in case.”

  * * *

  Scores of engineers had recently been dispatched to the lower gun-decks because Imperious was under heavy fire. Though giving as good as she’d got she’d recently lost two missile tubes and a shield generator. The docking bays heaved with smouldering pandemonium as the incoming ZR-3 settled. It was just another dilapidated near wreck and made little difference. There were too many Glo-whites that needed patching for anyone to worry about a standard UC transport. Some passing wit suggested sending out for sticking plasters and a bucket of bolts. Nobody laughed. Engineering was quickly running out of supplies and hands and time to turn around battered ships refitted for the fight. The exhausted medical team wearily collecting casualties weren’t even up to wisecracks. They’d run out of steam about ten hours previously when they’d realised there was no relief due in the foreseeable future and that there was no more space for patients. The case in hand didn’t help.

  The mobile gurney carrying Harris’ inert shape chuntered down the ramps towards the lift, fighting for space as people dodged and swore at it. The Biotech escort ignored them.

  A harassed Deck Officer tackled the recently disembarked crew, or those who’d walked down the ramp at any rate, a long tall Wing Leader who he knew mostly by reputation, a mousy brown boy and a dirty blonde girl. The boy was in shock, the girl inhabited a parallel universe, and the fretful pilot was hyped up on adrenaline and begging for a slapping. Who needed the Biotech, waiting patiently beside him, to make a diagnosis?

  “All three of you,” the Deck Officer stabbed a finger at the pilot who stared down his nose at him as if he couldn’t focus, “need to report to Medical and get yourselves patched up, then you two,” jabbing his board at Jenson and Sam, “should both report to the bridge.”

  “What?” Jenson couldn’t believe it. “No, not me. You’re wrong. I’m Flight...”

  The Biotech eyed him resignedly. Pilots were idiots, deprived of their wings they scuttled like headless chickens. “Ok, Wing Leader, come with me and we’ll get you sorted out, then we’ll see what the Admiral decides. Now, if you’d help the young lady...”

  “Dyssa,” supplied Sam helpfully.

  “Dyssa,” repeated the patient Biotech. “This way?” Nobody moved. “Please?”

  Sam and Dyssa looked at Jenson.

  He had locked in place, staring after Tam’s gurney.

  The hard-pressed Deck Officer cracked. “Wing Leader Jenson. Medical. Now.”

  * * *

  The giant door needed to close. The binders held the seals apart but were buckling with audible crunching noises. That left just about enough space to wriggle through if you were very, very skinny, lying flat on your back, had nerves like steel girders and moved very, very, very quickly because nothing, not even heavy-duty binders were going to stop a door that heavy closing for long. If you got caught the force would slice you apart.

  The control panel looked like fireworks. The boiling tank sizzled furiously.

  “Go.” Macluan was already clawing towards the gap on his stomach.

  Ellis knew he was too slow. Grazing her hip, ripping her jacket and accidentally spraying him with dirt and grit, she dived under the door. Rolling clear, she jack-knifed and stretched both arms groping for a grip on him. Fingers connected, then clutched as he shuffled forwards. He smiled, or was it a grimace of pain, blinking dirt from streaming eyes.

  Ellis grabbed, tugged, braced. Tugged. Hard. Harder. Hardest.

  The doors rumbled like thunder and the binders screamed.

  One colossal heartbreaking yank.

  The door rammed home.

  The boom, the thud, the deafening rolling echoes, the passage was a blast tunnel.

  And then… Nothing. Calm. Peace. Respite. Heavy breathing.

  “Time to move,” Macluan decided eventually.

  Ellis opened her eyes and rolled sideways, pulled herself upright.

  “How? You can’t move.” But she was raking the passage for possibilities. What she had no idea but there had to be something. “A gun would be downright handy right now.”

  That made no sense even to her.

  “Only if it’s big enough to be a walking stick when my legs come back,” said Mark caustically. He tried, and failed, to pull himself up the wall. “Help me stand up.”

  “I can’t carry you,” she said, knowing she’d die trying. “You’re too heavy.”

  “I don’t want you to carry me. Nor pull me. I just need a kick-start.”

  “Then how are we going to move?”

  “You’re going to hold me steady while I use TK on my legs,” he announced, adding scathingly. “I thought you’d’ve worked that out or why bother with the door?”

  Her mind went on strike. “Your legs? On you?”

  Carolli had told the truth. Telekinesis wouldn’t work. It was the weakest Donn talent, only used on light inanimate objects. It was a big part of lock manipulation but that was it. Ellis had been taught that since she was four standard years old, it was ground into her. Yet she’d never, she realised now, asked why. Or even why not. This was how Mark had survived the Autocracy cull, she suddenly realised like a light going on, he’d never closed doors only found different ways of going through them. Would it work? Why not? What else was there?

  “A little help, Ellis? Please? A bit of a boost here?”

  Ellis thudded back to today. “Strictly speaking that’s levitation.”

  The Donn, she wanted to scream, don’t do bodies. Just things. We can’t levitate us.

  Mark looked puzzled. “So?”

  Deep lines of strain made purple rings around his eyes and his jaw was clenched so tight teeth and bones were likely to shatter. Now she felt the pain, it swirled about him in tidal waves but he was the pivot, directing it inside, sucking it tight within his core because he was afraid that if she shared it would put her off her game and that could finish them both.

  Ellis looked at him and she knew. She understood. “You know what, Macluan?”

  “What?” It was more of a gasp than his normal clear tones.

  “You have a very creative mind. Kudos.” Winding both arms round him, she waited, counting heartbeats again, while he hitched his arms about her shoulders. “Countdown?”

  “Don’t mention countdowns,” begged Mark. “That’s H’s thing. Drives me mad.”

  * * *

  Six may or may not have realised that he’d lost his audience and the two Donn sacrifices had escaped, but other issues concerned him far more deeply. Carolli had opened communications with the wheels and the rest of the neo-Autocracy fleet; that meant that Six had not only a direct link with the wheels above but that he had overheard every disparaging word of Carolli’s scathing speech. It drove the final nail into the Baron’s coffin. Nobody had any idea of the pain and the misery Six had endured to become the god he was. Rather stupid vagrant… The thing has no name… Six, his name was Six. He was unique.

  Emir Carolli was a Latent fool who’d lost the key and only just recovered it in time to open the prison door. Domes and towers destroyed, resources wasted and Emir Carolli had known. Baron Carolli had vowed the Donn were dead yet he’d brought two of the enemy to Six’s very door. How often had he sworn he’d taken care of the Donn? And had he? No. It was time the Baron learned who ruled the battle and who would win the war.

  Who was the Wave-forcer?

  Who would dominate and conjoin the wheels?

  Who would control the reconfigured sonic array?

  Carolli had advised caution until the travel pod was in place, warned Si
x against the Union troops and the fleet swarming across the battlefield. He had claimed that a direct route would make Six’s capsule an easy target during that final journey. Six, vulnerable? The old man’s cautiousness was ridiculous. Six, in his reinforced capsule, with the Sisters so close, was invincible and everyone should know that. There would be a royal progress, an imperial display. A demonstration was called for, but not for the Union. For Emir Carolli.

  Carolli was bound for his observation post at moonbase, on the fourth moon.

  Rather stupid vagrant… The thing has no name…

  Learn my name, old man, it will be your last prayer.

  Until Six took control each wheel held its individual pulse-channel, its sonic lance.

  It would be enough.

  The Seven Sisters turned their blank faces towards the fourth moon.

  They waited, complacent, massive and implacable, for his next command.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The seven wheels hung in the View. Contemptuous threats spattered by iridescent flashes, they seemed curiously divorced from reality. Nothing touched them. The Union had tried. A moment previously they’d rotated, inexplicably and simultaneously, to face the fourth moon of Harth Norn, which was dipping below the curve of the planet. They never moved again, those gigantic wheels, they focused on the moon and never drew breath, simply waited and watched. Why? The whole damn scene was pregnant. Waiting. What for?

  Eban Krystie stood on the dais and chased the question round and round.

  There was no help on Imperious’ bridge.

  Terrin Stanson roamed the temporary AE banks, too involved in Flight’s ongoing losses to worry about why and the wherefore and the what-if-maybe.

  WuVane was back on-line but had no solutions to offer. He had enough on his hands with erupting Domes, a murderous zombied army and neo-Autocracy hellfire.

  Hold the fort, thought the Admiral wearily, but what was it all about?

  “Sir?” An exhausted rating hovered at his elbow.

  Krystie didn’t turn his head. “Yes?”

  “Wing Leader Jenson, Sir, and the boy.”

  Nodding, Krystie started to turn and stopped. If he’d swung he’d’ve missed it.

  Slowly, bit by bit, one by one, six wheels curtseyed, weaving a loose circle around a central hub that might’ve been the wheel that had discharged the survival pod. Krystie checked automatically. It was. The rims grazed, shimmered, forming a hexagon of circles. Nothing happened. Imperious held its breath. The silence was so intense it was a wall, and the wall became a hill, and the hill a mountain, then a world and then the hushed sunburst swallowing worlds. The very lowest wheel of the six surrounding the pivot took aim and fired. The moon trembled before electromagnetic wavelengths that only a rock could hear.

  Silently, crazily, unstoppably, the sound bomb erupted.

  The moon burst, detonating into concentric rings of mineral garbage.

  The indiscriminate blast stormed walls of flak that battered all craft in its path.

  Krystie shut his eyes and saw the silent screaming coming for him.

  The Autocracy had given up sonic weapon trials because they’d never been able to lick the uncontrollable recoil that tended to fly back and destroy the weapon itself.

  “Solved that one then,” he murmured through dry lips.

  Comprehension staggered... Firing one wheel at a time? Then why create the hexagon formation? It made no sense... They’d destroyed a moon with one shot...

  And here came the backlash...

  “Navigation, hard to port.” There was no need, Navigation was in wise hands and Imperious was already shifting. Kickback would be brutal and Krystie instinctively braced.

  The first repercussion belted Imperious.

  Then he realised. Out there both sides screamed and dodged and ducked and...

  There were balls of flaming Darts, as well as Glo-whites... Panicking Darts...

  He stared, dumbfounded. “Terrin…”

  Clinging doggedly to one of the AE terminals, Terrin Stanson looked up and flashed him a tight grin. “I see it, silly buggers shot themselves in the foot. Not so smart, eh?”

  Krystie whipped back to the View.

  Solemnly, still linked, the seven wheels rotated their blank uncaring faces towards Imperious. In a hideous minute he was swallowed up and swept down their cavernous throat.

  They were ravenous.

  * * *

  Carolli’s Deep Space Cruiser was clearing low atmosphere when the first moon fragments hit. The DS XT-9 was a smaller craft, and thrashed like a dead whale in the ballistic spume. Eventually it evaded the worst and sped on but it was a close shave. Thus the Baron got the best view of the consequences to Harth Norn. It was a kill-strike. Chunks of misshapen rock pelted past, meteor after meteor after meteor in an epic asteroid strike. Deep oceans boiled, vaporising, and the comet-ridden skies turned black with storm-smoke.

  It was incredible, unbelievable. Thunderstruck, at first he couldn’t process what had happened or the damage Six had inflicted on their plan. It was supremely brainless, an ironically mindless and malicious attack but most of all insane. Six was deranged. This was the work of a lunatic and the implications were immense. Moonbase was gone and the planet would soon be fighting off virtual extinction. And then he realised the real target of the strike.

  Carolli had been going to the moon and Six had known.

  Six had turned on Carolli.

  For a timeless second he seethed, unable to move or think until, inevitably, his fine-tuned survival instinct kicked-in. Nothing was perfect, no weapon, no plot and no game and Six’s psychosis had killed this one dead. Krystie would be re-calculating odds, and getting them right. There was no going back; such lunacy was suicidal. Carolli’s reaction was swift. Six was ripped instantly out of his personal probability matrix and the partnership dissolved.

  So what next?

  Emir Carolli’s one advantage was that no one knew where he was.

  He briefly considered returning to Imperious and trying to bluff it out, but had to admit odds were stacked against him. He’d always despised the Union anyway and it offered no future prominence or wealth. Partnership with the High Council might be resurrected but only when he held the whip hand. There were other political bases in the galaxy that might welcome his expertise, for example, an extremely interesting situation brewing at Ek’S’as with the Manticulusians. Time and opportunity were on his side. His Typhion genes were still functional; he had centuries to spend on power-gathering, perhaps even millennia.

  He activated the pilot’s link.

  “Find the nearest Bylanes window and plug in a course for Manticulus Major II.”

  * * *

  It was a heavy-metal eulogy and surpassingly aggrieved.

  All over Harth Norn the freak winds stormed and soared. Dark skies sang.

  Gales trumpeted purple fury, trampling everything before them.

  Along with them they towed the roaring coasts, and the tides. Oh the tides...

  Islands drowned as boulders pounded. The steaming oceans of Harth Norn took wild payment for the murder of the moon and heedless disruption of nature’s order. They weren’t fussy over who paid what, just massive, pernicious and unstoppable and violent, vengeful and warlike. Their hammering tantrums rendered islands and Domes and ground combat petty and insignificant. They stopped the war. There is little to match any planet’s Mother Nature once she is good and riled and ready to rock and roll. Nothing in fact, and Harth Norn’s goddess was righteously livid. Neo-Autocracy rebellion was amateur in comparison.

  Suddenly the Tokkers and WuVane had a common enemy. Weather.

  * * *

  Spinal regeneration was hell. Macluan leaned up against the cold wall of the passage to the entrance gasping like a stranded fish, and forced himself not to pummel metal. It would divert attention from big pain to little pain and it had worked before, but was bound to cut and bruise his fist. Ellis would see and worry and waste time s
colding him. At least he sort of hoped she would worry, underneath she might worry. As he debated, nails biting palms, she emerged, trotting rapidly, out of a dark junction cradling something long and shiny.

  “Look what I got you,” holding it out proudly, “Standard II Automatic.”

  “We didn’t need any firepower.” Mark knew all about Standard IIs. Barsnip had demonstrated S-II Autos, along with myriad warnings about the disadvantages entailed in a weapon that turned on the person who fired it if it wasn’t programmed correctly.

  “You need a crutch.”

  “I need a stretcher,” he snarled before he could bite it back.

  Her glare was incendiary, promising more trouble than the unreliable gun. “And I’m going to find one of those round here where exactly? This is all the cane you got.”

  “Ok.” Mark carefully tested one screaming leg. “Thank you, Ellis, I’m ever so impressed by your scavenging skills and bless you for finding me a dodgy gun. I think I’m probably developing a phobia about canes,” he added wryly, tentatively putting pressure on a potentially highly explosive weapon instead of a highly explosive leg. After a step or two he had to admit, yes, as a crutch it worked and dramatically speeded up the limp.

  Up ahead, the bright glow of daylight beckoned from about a thousand years away.

  “You are? It’s me that’s developing a phobia about your legs,” muttered Ellis, critically assessing his gait as she followed. “What did you do? Paint a target on them?”

  Mark stopped.

  Peering past she glimpsed the familiar silhouette between them and daylight.

  She’d crab-walked around him in a heartbeat. “Hello Dandy, how’re you doing?”

  * * *

  The blast struck Imperious with a series of deafening whams and the first minutes of Sam’s career on the bridge were spent plastered against one of the struts supporting the View. Damage reports rocketed to and fro, jiving along the terminals below. Thus he discovered that they didn’t have any holes in the hull, and that shields, though pierced on the gun decks, were holding in most vital locations. Surviving was good, surviving in one piece without too many cuts, bruises and breaks was better. Sam quickly understood that much the same went for Imperious. He wasn’t sure he should’ve heard it all and certainly didn’t want to. Somebody unsympathetic, probably Jenson, peeled him off the strut, planting him upright and he swayed in his own breeze. Sam was now facing Krystie, with the View on his right and Jenson behind him. On his left the whirlwind Stanson roared about the temporary terminals like a mobile tantrum and the rest of the bridge heaved like a seismic wave.