Gaia's Brood

by Nick Travers

  Chapter 42

  “She’s coming around.”

  Pain floods my brain. “Ooh.” I hold my head with my hands as a thumping headache takes hold. For a moment I keep the world at bay, then open my eyes. My crew stands in a circle looking down at me, concern on their faces. I am in my cabin on the Shonti Bloom. “What happened?”

  Trent appears. “You got stuck by a neuro coated crossbow bolt.”

  Memory floods my mind: the constable’s crossfire pinning Trent down, the mad dash across open ground in a constable uniform, the struggle behind the rock, the pain in my shoulder.

  I raise myself onto my good elbow. “You shot me.”

  Trent grins back. “If only. Actually, the constable you were trying to disable snatched up a lose bolt and stabbed you in the shoulder.”

  My left shoulder is strapped up in bandages.

  Trent grins. “Don’t worry, it’s just a flesh wound.”

  The mention of constables brings anxiety thudding to the fore. “Where are the constables?” It also brings an awareness of the ship. “And why aren’t we moving.”

  Izzy smiles down at me. “Thanks to your keen intuition and our night-time raid, two of the constable’s ships were so full of Whisper holes they failed to rise. The other two started to leak gas like sieves as soon as they gained any sort of altitude.”

  Fernando shoves Izzy out of the way, he’s grinning too. “Once you took the last constable out—”

  “I thought Trent shot her?”

  “—whatever. Anyway, I came back for you, we bundled you into the Shonti and easily out ran them. You’ve been out of it for a whole day.”

  “So where are we now?”

  “Somewhere called platform sixty-nine—we need supplies and fuel.”

  I realize someone is missing. “Where’s Scud?” They all look at each other guilt written across their features. Oh no, not Scud. Despite the pain shooting through my head, I struggle to a sitting position on the bed. “What’s happened to him? He’s not...”

  Izzy sits on the bed beside me and takes my hand. “He’s okay. He’s just gone a bit...”

  “A bit what?”

  “Odd,” Fernando adds.

  “Odd? What sort of odd?”

  Izzy bites her lip and nods. “Just odd. You’d better come and see for yourself. He’s in the map room.”

  I struggle to my feet, pushing away the offers of help, and stagger to the door.

  In the map room Scud is seated at the table. At first he looks fine, no bandages, no blood, no obvious injuries. Then I notice the slackness of his face and the distant, unfocused look in his eyes. Around him plates of food remain untouched and piles of paper, covered with figures and strange scribblings lie abandoned.

  “He’s barely breathing,” Izzy says.

  Fernando waves a hand in front of Scud’s face. Scud blinks, once, but makes no other response. “He just sits like this and does nothing.”

  Remarkably, I believe that might be concern for Scud I hear in Fernando’s voice—inwardly I grin, but it’s too painful to crack a smile at the moment.

  Trent bends down to examine Scud. “You don’t look overly concerned, Nina, have you ever seen him like this before?”

  I think I might be able to guess what’s happening here. “What was he doing right before this happened?”

  Izzy points to the journal lying on the map table open to the list of clues we have found. “We were debating what these mean. Scud was scribbling random phrases and numbers on these scraps of paper—”

  “And I said it was easy,” Fernando interrupts. “It’s just a couple of grid references and a bearing, but Scud thought that was too simple. ‘Suit yourself,’ I said and left them to it, because these sort of things just irritate me.”

  “—And he just sort of froze,” Izzy continues. “He’s been like this all night and all morning.”

  I stare at the clues for a while, waiting for them to speak to me and reveal their secrets, but they’re just a jumble of random numbers. If anyone can crack the code, it’s Scud. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  Trent looks skeptical. “This isn’t the sort of thing that normally happens to people, Nina.”

  “It’s not unusual for Scud. It’s part of his condition. I’ve seen it happen before—when his brain gets overloaded with information it sort of shuts down the rest of his body, until he’s worked through every possible parameter.”

  Izzy steps around Leanne’s box in the corner to view Scud from the opposite side. “You mean he’s still in there? Should we get a doctor?”

  “No, he’s fine.” I gently lift a glass of water to Scud’s mouth and tip it so the water touches his lips. He drinks without changing his expression. “We just need to leave him until he’s finished working through whatever he’s thinking about.”

  Fernando looks incredulous. “Is that it?”

  “Pretty much. I suggest we all get take shore leave and use the opportunity to restock—it could take a while. Where are we?” Through the gondola windows the docks look the same as dozens of other docks on dozens of other platforms.

  Izzy takes one more look at Scud then shrugs. “Platform sixty-nine, a large residential platform, not particularly well off, but I spotted a mega market when I was scouting the place out earlier. Fernando and Trent covered up the Shonti’s name, we’re hiring the mooring in the name of the Helix—a tramp trader out of Newark.”

  Caution, that’s good—they’re a good crew. “I guess we go explore that market then.”

  “Ugh.” Fernando grimaces. “If you two are going shopping, I’ll get the fuel.”

  “And I will stay here,” Trent declares, “in case Scud comes round.”

  He can wait all he likes, but Scud won’t come out of his daze until he is good and ready.

  Once my headache settles, Izzy and I explore the market.

  “What do you think?” Izzy pops up from behind a stall wearing a wig of auburn hair like mine. “Do you think Fernando prefers auburn—” she whips off the wig and replaces it with a head of long platinum blond hair. “—Or blond?”

  “He’d like you even if you had green hair.”

  “Hmm, I don’t think they have green.”

  I laugh till my sides hurt and pain returns to my head. It’s been a long time since we’ve relaxed and just been girls together. All this responsibility has turned us serious.

  It’s amazing how the occasional close shave with death can leach the fun out of life

  While I wait for Scud to come out of his comatose state, I can afford to take a bit of time to just hang out with my cousin and lark about.

  Izzy whips off the wig. “He’s sweet, below all the bravado, but he’s worried about his family.”

  “Are you two serious then?” I can’t believe I missed two of my crew coming together as a couple. I’m always the last to notice such things, just ahead of Scud—in that respect we are not that different.

  “Kind of, but he’ll probably dump me when we get back and I tell him I want to take over my father’s trading business.”

  “I thought his family was all about business?”

  “Wrong type of business—they’re not really the hands-on type.”

  “Nothing’s ever happened until it’s happened, Izzy. He does care about the family thing, but not as much as they do.”

  “Well we can’t elope,” Izzy says, “not if I want to keep the family name.”

  We fall about laughing like a couple of teenagers.

  In a fit of exuberance I slip on the blond wig. “What do you think?”

  Izzy’s smile evaporates. “That’s not funny.”

  For a moment I’m stunned then I realize she’s upset. I turn to a strategically placed mirror to see why.

  Leanne. The resemblance is uncanny. The sight sends shivers up my spine, like staring at a ghost—a ghost of myself. If I close my eyes and lay in a box I’ll be her. Hastily, I thrust the wig back at Izzy.

  If she is
n’t my twin, then she’s my clone, or I’m her clone or we’re both clones of someone else. How can I be a clone when I have a father and mother? No one’s ever mentioned my mother having twins, but didn’t my father disappear shortly after my birth? Maybe he took Leanne with him.

  The thought of my father treating Leanne like an experiment chills my heart—what sort of monster was he? How could anyone do that to their own child? Maybe I got lucky when he left.

  I become aware of raised voices as I bubble up out of my thoughts.

  Izzy grabs me by the arm. “Can you believe she made me buy both wigs? Come on, we’re attracting attention. Have you noticed there’s a lot of Science Guild around here?”

  I shake myself from my revelry; the bazaar is crawling with Guild troops.

  Izzy steers me into the cover of another stall, the girly foolishness completely gone. “Nina, snap out of it. We’ve got to get away from here. There must be a whole squadron of Guild troops milling around the square. Do you think they’ve traced her to us?” She lowers her voice dramatically, “You know—Leanne.”

  “It’s possible. On the other hand, it could be coincidence. What we need is information.” I scan the market and spot a child begging in a doorway, a boy aged about ten.

  I grab Izzy. “Follow me.”