Descent

by Hamish Spiers

  Her breathing was heavy now and beads of sweat trickled down her brow. Calming herself, she stepped over him and crouched down beside the injured Imraehi.

  Leilec was crying now from the pain, and shuddering. However, his eyes were still open and he lifted one arm to grip Jiang’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he told her. “Whoever you are, thank you.” Then he let go of her shoulder and ran his hands through her hair, staring. “I have a daughter your age,” he said. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again. I don’t suppose you -”

  “If I can find her,” Jiang said, “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Why should we fight?” the man cried out, attempting to lift himself up and then falling back, his eyes rolling in their sockets. “You and I, we have no grievance.”

  Jiang patted him on his chest. “Please. Try not to talk so much. Take deep breaths. Maybe I can call someone...”

  “No,” the man said. “No. No.” He fumbled around in his trouser pocket, shook his head and looked at her again. “That desk I was at where you saw me before... Take all the cards there. Take them. You’ll find what you need to know about the stinger nets on one of them.”

  Jiang gave him a puzzled look. “Why are you helping me?”

  “Because,” Leilec managed, “you’re a good person.”

  Jiang hung her head to hide the sudden onset of tears. She’d been working with Vismach more or less the entire time she’d been on Imraec Tarc and all the deaths he had caused, she had been party to for that simple fact. Back in the Department of Security, she had a term for that. An ‘accessory’. And that’s what she felt like now.

  Then a tugging at her arm brought her back from her thoughts into the dimly lit room of the research facility.

  “Please,” Leilec told her, “I’m dying. I can feel it. Help me end it a little more easily. Please.”

  “But -” Jiang started.

  “Please.”

  Wiping the tears away, Jiang readied her blaster again, changing the setting. “I’m so sorry.”

  Leilec smiled. “Don’t be.”

  Jiang took a deep breath and fired.

  She then looked for the cards and once she had them, she wasted no time in getting out of there. Vismach’s massacre had certainly bought her some time but, also just as certainly, it would bring the authorities racing to investigate.

  The damage to the facility prevented her leaving the same way she’d come in but she found an alternative exit on the far side of the circular walkway over the pit where the dead now floated amongst miscellaneous pieces of debris. The sea water was well above the bottom railing around the pit and she had to wade through to reach the other side. Fortunately though, the electrical danger had passed. On the seaward side of the walkway, she forced a door and discovered a launching bay with several powered boats.

  Jiang had never driven a powered boat in her life but she wasn’t afraid to try. She wasn’t going to go far, for one thing, and she couldn’t risk swim swimming anyway in case the water damaged the cards she’d acquired.

  The boat, as she had hoped, was not difficult to handle. She followed the beach and took the boat around two points on the land, which brought it out of direct line of sight with the research facility she’d just left. Then she brought it to a jetty behind some sheds that gave the appearance of disuse and neglect and, then, she got tricky.

  First, she placed the cards in a safe place on dry land. After that, she undressed, turned the boat around, powered it up again and, as it accelerated, she leapt over the side. When she surfaced, she saw the boat spraying wake behind it and shrinking in the distance.

  She sighed as she reached the water’s edge and climbed out. Her little trick took care of the problem of anyone tracking her by her proximity to the boat but she wasn’t in the clear by a long shot. Clad as she was right then in nothing but drenched underwear, she was hardly inconspicuous but the stolen uniform Vismach had given her brought its own set of problems too.

  She put on the boots and pants and then looked the jacket over. For a moment, she was at a complete loss as to what to do but then, by chance, her gaze strayed inside the nearest shed and she saw, hanging on the wall, several sets of diving flippers and snorkel masks. She smiled as a new plan formed and soon re-emerged on the city streets. Her stolen uniform was now soaked and the jacket was worn inside out, the seams showing as they did on wetsuits. In one hand, she carried a pair of diving flippers, with a snorkel mask in the other and the several cards she carried were shoved out of sight in her boots.

  She attracted a few curious looks from passersby but no suspicious gazes and she reached the motel room without incident.

  She then changed into the clothes she’d arrived in the city in, threw out the stolen uniform and left. Within the hour, she was on an atmospheric transport returning to Port Alema, with the death and destruction of Keraji behind her.

  In Port Alema, there was some safety thanks to Vismach’s sabotage of the surveillance networks but Jiang was conscious of the fact that this sanctuary would be taken away from her before too long as well. The authorities in Keraji would already be reviewing their own surveillance footage and she, being seen entering the naval research and development center alongside Vismach, would shortly be on a watch list with every regional authority on the planet instructed to apprehend her on sight. She therefore had to be off Imraec Tarc before the Port Alema surveillance network came back online.

  Her first stop was Vismach’s place and, even now, the Hie’shi surprised her. On entering the apartment, she had expected to find a massive security compromise left behind, one that she’d have to clean up. His research on Imraec Tarc’s defenses, the communication equipment he had used to contact the Hie’shi High Command and the assorted bits and pieces of machinery that had filled the room. What she found though was a completely empty dwelling, void of all but its basic furnishings and immaculately clean. Vismach may have purchased a generous lease on the place but it was clear that he hadn’t intended to return to it unless it was necessary for the purposes of his work.

  Suddenly, Jiang felt an overwhelming sense of grief and loneliness. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she choked back a sob. Then, slumping herself down in a chair, she buried her face in her hands. She didn’t know how long she sat there but the midday sun was filtering through the windows when she had entered the apartment and when, dry eyed and dazed, she grew conscious of her surroundings once more, the afternoon light was fading.

  She climbed up and switched a light on. Then she began inserting the cards Leilec had given her into her pad and, one by one, she searched through their contents until she came across the information on the Imraehi’s stinger nets and what they did.

  As she read, her chest tightened and her hands trembled. Then she put the pad down and thought over her options. They were woefully limited. Something had to be done and with the Hie’shi task force almost in the system, there was no time to wait for help. It was up to her now to act on the information she had discovered, and, given what she had to do, any hope of a rescue by Drackson and the others from there on in would be out of the question. She was alone.

  She left Vismach’s apartment and returned to her own accommodation, for which she still had a few days left on the lease as well. Then she did her own clean up and collected a few cards and miscellaneous items before leaving. Afterwards, she found a public information terminal. She produced something else that Vismach had given her shortly after her arrival, an encryption key to access the shipping schedules for all planned commercial and naval arrivals and departures.

  A brief search gave her just what she wanted; an automated naval cargo transport was departing for a station designated Orbital Six at eleven hundred hours. She smiled. The Federation navy had toyed with the idea of automated transports at some point and they had abandoned it. Perhaps the Imraehi would abandon it as well if she succeeded in pulling off what she was about to attempt. On the surface of it, getting aboard Orbital Six by stowing away on
an automated transport didn’t seem particularly daunting. She’d already been a stowaway on the Drifter’s Folly. And that was for a much longer time, with armed pirates on board the vessel. Comparatively, provided the transport wasn’t too heavily guarded, this would be a simple task. The real difficulties however would arise once she reached Orbital Six.

  22. The Sea

  Asten looked at his wife and smiled. Over the past couple of days, he’d decided that if everything wasn’t all right, pretending it was was the next best thing. Somehow it worked. If this was the end, then there were worse ends he could think of.

  Glancing back, Selina saw his smile and laughed. “What can you possibly be happy about there?”

  Asten reached forward and held her hand. “You and me. Here together. It’s not the worst way to go.”

  Selina smiled too. “I guess not.” Then her smile faded. “But I’ve just been looking over our field rations and I’ve got to tell you... we’re going to have to go down to half rations each meal or we’re not going to last much longer.”

  Asten sighed. “Ardeis would have given us enough rations to make the distance. There’d be no point in any of this otherwise. I mean, why would he bother? Why wouldn’t he just shoot us? No, he wants us to make it off this rock alive to teach us our lesson, gain understanding or just put us through the wringer for the hell of it. But he doesn’t want us dead.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Selina said, “but isn’t it better to be on the safe side? Just in case?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Asten said, dipping his oar into the current to push them away from a tangle of logs they were drifting towards.

  Selina opened the cooking kits.

  “I can do that,” Asten offered.

  “You just keep us on course,” Selina replied.

  With Asten on lookout duty, she prepared half rations for them both. Then after the evening meal, they pulled up by the riverbank to deal with certain unavoidable necessities and, once they were taken care of, with the sun falling below the line of trees behind them, they pushed out into the river again and back into their gentle rhythm of the past few days.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Asten suggested after a few hours. “I’ve got the evening watch.”

  “I’m all right,” Selina replied, stifling a yawn.

  “You’re tired,” Asten said. “Go on. Get some sleep.”

  “I want to see the moon rise.”

  Asten shook his head. “It’s waning. Been waning the past few days. It’s not worth waiting up for.”

  “Hm,” Selina murmured, leaning back in Asten’s lap. “You know, I’ve been thinking. It’s not a bad place, this planet.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Asten said. “It’s just hard to appreciate it when we’re stranded with dwindling food supplies and no idea where we are.”

  “Do you think Drackson will find us?”

  “I’m sure he will,” Asten said. “But the problem is when. I don’t know when he’ll reach this place but it really is too far out of the way. The Harskan Sector’s closer to home than this place.”

  “It’s almost like the world that time forgot,” Selina agreed.

  “Well, we forgot it,” Asten pointed out.

  “True.” Selina rubbed her belly. “I think the baby just moved.”

  “I think it’s a bit too early for that, honey,” Asten said, chuckling. “It’s probably just your stomach rumbling.”

  “I don’t think so,” Selina said. “Just because I’ve only just found out I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’ve only been pregnant a couple of weeks. I told you. I think I’m probably three months into my term.”

  Asten leaned over and kissed her. “If you say so, honey. You don’t look three months pregnant.”

  “And what would you know about it?” Selina countered.

  Asten laughed. “You’ve got me there, honey.”

  “Hey, Asten?” Selina said, her eyes closing and her voice soft.

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “I love you.”

  Asten kissed her again. “I love you too. Sleep well.”

  “Wake me up in the morning,” she murmured.

  “I will. Sweet dreams.”

  With his wife sleeping, lying back in his lap, Asten let his thoughts wander. He dragged the paddle lazily about in the water, using it only to push the canoe away from the southern bank when it drifted too close or push it back when the current pulled them too far in the other direction. He found his thoughts strangely unfocused as he drifted downstream, the river so much alike in its ebbs and flows to the tides of chance that had brought him and Selina to this remote world in the middle of nowhere in the first place.

  Chance. He shook his head as the word entered his thoughts. That great unknown entity that could create, through incredible and complex paths of evolution, amazing wonders, or through its innate senselessness, make a mockery of all life. It could throw limitless power into the hands of an imbecile or drag a great mind into life’s depths and hold them there until they died impoverished and in obscurity. Chance played without rules and was accountable to no one.

  He wondered if Ardeis had hoped his thoughts would sooner or later drift this way - for, after all, chance was inexplicably linked with opportunity. Here, in the jungles of Imraec Tarc, gliding along the rippled surface of this vast river, freedom, self-determination, chance and opportunity intertwined like the tangles of vines on the river’s edge. Chance had at the outset cast them into their predicament. Freedom, of a kind, was then granted to them in the mix. They had self-determination in the decisions they had made throughout the past few days. Then chance had re-emerged, allowing them to discover the sap that now held their canoe together and the sap itself, like the supplies that had been given to them, was an opportunity they had taken to reach the point where they now were.

  What worth freedom carried was dependent entirely on the opportunities that came with it. That was the point Ardeis wanted to make. In his mind, the freedom the Katarans had before the Imraehi arrived on their world was limited by the lack of opportunities available to them and what freedom they had lost was but a small price to pay for the vast opportunities they had received in return. Or something like that.

  Asten sighed. Right then, he realized something else. He didn’t care anymore. He didn’t sympathize with the Imraehi’s perspective on the matter of Katara but he didn’t particular care what the United Frontier did about it one way or the other. Right then, he just wanted to be back home on Phalamki, lying in his soft bed with Selina on the mattress beside him, the morning sun glistening through the window and reflecting off the leaves that brushed against it and a light breeze drifting into the room. And their child. A little girl or a little boy... playing quietly in another room or coming in to rouse them from their sleep.

  Sleep. He’d had his turn of it during the sunlit hours so he knew he couldn’t complain but he craved it once again.

  He felt his eyelids grow heavy and his head tilted down against his chest. Then as his chin connected, he was jerked back to his senses and he sat up. There was a trickling sound that arrested his attention and for a moment, he thought the boat was leaking. However, there was no rush of water around his feet or the gear that Selina had safely stowed in the bottom. Then some faint light from what was left of the vanishing moon splashed off the ripples in the water and he saw by their movement that the current was much stronger now. The canoe was racing ahead.

  He panicked for a moment, wondering if there were a waterfall nearby or some other obstacle. Rapids perhaps. He strained to see in the darkness but saw no sign of either. Then he saw foam spraying off a white cap. There were waves around the canoe. They had made it to the coast.

  However, there was a danger now and the dim light of this almost moonless night increased it in no small measure.

  He nudged his wife. “Selina. Wake up.”

  “Mm?” she murmured, blinking and looking around. “Asten, it’s still dark.”
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  “We’ve reached the sea,” he said. “Come on. We’ve got to get to the beach before we get dragged out. Hold on.”

  Selina wasted no time sitting up and grabbing both sides of the canoe. Asten stabbed the paddle deep into the water, attempting to turn the boat around. As it turned though, he felt the tide dragging them away from the beach.

  He tried in desperation to push the canoe back towards it but to no avail.

  “Paddle right!” he called out. “I’ll paddle left.”

  “Got it.” Selina leaned forward and fumbled for her own paddle but, as she did, a wave caught them from behind, lifting them up and throwing her on her side. There was a clatter and a splash in the darkness.

  “Asten,” she called back. “The -”

  Mid-sentence, another wave lifted the canoe up on its crest, only this time it flipped it right over, dumping them both into the water.

  Asten struggled to the foamy surface. “Selina!” he cried out.

  “Asten!”

  From her reply, it sounded as though she were a few meters away. Asten forced his way towards her. Then he dived below the surface of the water, pulling off his boots and his trousers. He burst above the surface again for a gasp of air and then went under once more to tear off the shirt that was dragging him down.

  When he resurfaced, he called out again. “Selina!”

  “I’m here, Asten.”

  “Take your clothes off,” Asten said. “They’ll drag you down.”

  “I’ve done that,” she called back. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” Asten said, waving his hand in the darkness. “Can you find my hand?”

  A tight grip answered him and then, holding on, he pushed back against the water with his free hand, using the rolling motion of the waves to carry him closer to the shore, trying to put himself on their crests every time they came through.

  Then, after what seemed like several minutes, he felt sand beneath his feet. He dragged Selina onto the bank and then they struggled into the shallower water, knocked down occasionally by the waves, until they reached dry land.