Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (29 page)

When the airlock outer door began
to cycle open, Marie grabbed me and we kissed for a long time. By the time we
finished, the outer hatch was wide open and the lynch mob outside had lowered
their guns and were watching us curiously.

“We have an audience,” I said.

“I knew they wouldn’t shoot a
pair of unarmed lovers!”

“So the kiss was just to
manipulate these poor country folk!”

“Maybe,” she said slyly.

“You’re the most scheming woman
I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve only just worked that
out?”

I sighed. “Shall we go meet them?”

“Let’s,” she said taking my arm
as if we were simply going for an evening stroll.

We climbed down onto the
petrified mega branch and walked slowly towards the welcoming committee.

“Good day folks,” I said. “Who’s
in charge?”

* * * *

Julius
Klasson was lanky and sun-tanned with rough stubble on his chin and an easy
manner. He was also the nearest thing the survivalists had to a leader. He
lived in a simple cottage made of petrified wood bricks quarried from the
forest and decorated with furniture made of the same material, polished smooth
to bring out their metallic colors.

“You’re lucky to be alive,”
Klasson said as he motioned us to a stone bench seat fitted with hand sewn
cushions. He took a large single stone chair, adding, “Some of our folks shoot strangers
on sight.”

Hospitality was clearly not required
to survive on a post-mass extinction world.

“All strangers, or just those
from BBI?” Marie asked pointedly.

“No difference. They all want to
level our homes, and we ain’t going to let them.”

The dirt-poor farmers outside scratching
in shallow trenches with hand tools couldn’t have appeared less formidable. The
impression was accentuated by Klasson’s Spartan house and simple clothes.

“BBI’s a big corporation with a
lot of money,” I said. “No offense, but you don’t look like you’re in any
position to stop them.”

“Looks can be deceiving flyboy.”
He glanced meaningfully at an ancient long barreled hunting rifle perched
against the stone wall. “We’ve been shooting up their shiny little bits of junk
for years.”

“When they’re ready, the Consortium
will come in here with mercenaries packing state of the art firepower. You won’t
be able to stop them with a handful of antique guns.”

“Watch me.”

I liked his courage, but doubted
his sanity.

“They want to terraform this
planet,” Marie said. “You’ve already started. Why not make a deal with them?”

“We ain’t changin’ the planet,
we’re adaptin’ to it. Yeah, we brought kelp, and sea urchins to eat the kelp,
and otters to eat the sea urchins, and we eat them all, but we didn’t destroy the
dinotrees to do it. We live with them.”

Dinosaur trees? I glanced through
the window at the gigantic stone mega-trees Refuge clung to. In a way, they
were like dinosaurs, only bigger.

“This planet is nearly dead,” I
said.

“Not dead! Comin’ back to life.
The forest is full of small animals, insects, even our vines. We scattered
seeds from the air about seventy years ago. Now the vines are all across this
continent. In another hundred years, this continent will be green again.” He
glanced at the thickening, leafy vines snaking around the enormous limbs of the
dinotrees thoughtfully. “They want to terraform the planet with high explosives,
but we don’t need to do that. We can live here just as it is.”

It didn’t matter whether Klasson was
right or wrong, once BBI’s plan was accepted by the Earth Council, large scale
demolition would begin and there would be nothing he could do about it.

Klasson saw the skepticism in my
eyes. “We were here first. They can go find their own damn planet.”

“They’ve deleted all record of
your existence,” Marie said. “There’s nothing left to support your claim.”

“There’s us. We’re proof.”

“Not if you’re dead,” I said. One
minute’s bombardment from orbit and all that’d be left of him or his bedraggled
tree farmers would be a pile of ash.

“You sure you don’t work for ‘
em
?”

“I don’t, but I intend to pay
them a visit.”

Klasson eyes narrowed. “Why would
you want to do that?”

“They’ve got something of mine,
something I intend to get back.”

“What would that be?”

 
“An alien artifact,” Marie said. “We’re . . . collectors.”

Klasson gave us a dubious look.
“Hmph.” He stood and retrieved a triangular metallic object from a stone shelf
and threw it to me. “What’s that worth to you?”

I turned the object over in my
hand, noting it was marked with a script I’d never seen before. “What is it?”

“You tell me, Mr Collector. There
used to be aliens here millions of years ago, before the Tree Killer ripped the
guts out of the planet. They must have cleared out fast, because they left a
lot of stuff behind.”

“Alien tech?” Marie asked,
smelling an opportunity.

“Relics. You just got to know where
to look.”

“Which aliens?”

Klasson shrugged. “Don’t know.
Never paid much attention to the ruins. Never met an alien.”

I turned the artifact over in my
hands curiously. Whatever it was, its power source had depleted long ago. I
tossed it back to him. “Thanks, but I’m after something specific.”

He returned the relic to its decorative
position on the shelf. “So you’re going to steal something from those BBI lab
monkeys and you don’t want them knowing you’re coming. Right? And you figure I
can help you.”

I nodded. “Do you know a way in?”

Klasson grunted noncommittally. “It’s
a big base and it’s well guarded.”

“You’ve been there?”

“They kidnapped one of my people
a few years back – for questioning. I went in with some of the boys and got him
out.” His leathery face slowly cracked a smile. “They don’t kidnap our people no
more.”

Clearly there was more to that
story, but I was already certain he was our man. “How’d you get in?”

“Walked in. Shot up the place.
Walked out. Home in time for supper.”

Klasson might have been nuts,
fighting a war he could never win, but I was beginning to like him. “Feel like
another walk?”

His face darkened. “They’ve
increased their security since then. Got a lot of tech guarding the place now.”

“What we’re looking for will be
with their picometric scanner,” Marie said. “Ever heard of it?”

“Nope, but the lab’s on the east
side.”

“Help us and we’ll help you,” Marie
said.

“How you going to help me?”

“We’ll bring you weapons,” she
said.

I gave Marie a surprised look. “We
will?”

“You don’t look like no gun runner,”
Klasson said.

“I’m not,” Marie said putting her
arm around my shoulders, “But Sirius here is one of the best smugglers not in
jail.” She turned towards me. “Aren’t you?”

I’d smuggled contraband, just to
make ends meet, but running guns was another matter. As far as the navy was
concerned, that was a capital crime, punishable by death. “What do you need?”

“Better guns, smarter ammo and a
few sat killers.”

“How many guns?”

“A thousand.”

Was this guy equipping an
insurrection or an army? Even so, a few hundred hardened survivalists sneaking
through Deadwood’s petrified forests taking shots at terraformers with modern
weapons could tie up BBI and the Consortium for years. I found the idea
strangely appealing.

“Got any money?” I asked.

“Nope. Have you?”

I still had Lena’s credit vault.
Would she mind if I used it to pay for a small war on a dead planet? I knew Armin’s
Armaments had everything Klasson wanted, even satellite killers, but they were
illegal and would draw the attention of navy spies. “I’ll get you a hundred
guns, spare parts and enough smart ammo to keep you in business for the next
twenty years, but no sat killers.”

Klasson considered the offer a
moment. “If you get killed, I get nothing.”

“If I get killed, I won’t be dying
alone.”

His weathered face took on a
calculating look as he wondered how many BBI goons I could take with me. He
probably would have guided me to the base just to annoy BBI, treating any guns he
got out of the deal as a bonus. “How many of you?”

“Both of us,” I replied, “And my
engineer . . . He’s a tamph.”

The survivalist arched his brow
curiously. “Never met one. Heard of ‘
em
. This planet
would suit tamphs, down on the equator. Ain’t much life in the oceans, not much
for ‘em to eat, but the climate’s good. Throw a few fish out there and they’d
be right at home.”

“Izin could tell his friends on
Earth. If they got here, BBI would never get rid of them.”

“Hmm. I heard tamphs are good
fighters.”

“You have no idea.” Because of
their history, tamphs weren’t allowed in the military or the EIS, and because
of their inhuman abilities, they weren’t allowed guns on Earth. Even so,
legends persisted from the ancient past of what they were capable of. Having
seen Izin fight, I knew the legends were true.

 
Klasson looked thoughtful, perhaps imagining
tamphs swarming through the warm equatorial waters to the south, then he said, “For
a hundred guns, parts and ammo, I’ll get you to the base. After that you’re on
your own.”

“You got a deal,” I said.

Klasson picked up a plate of
dried, spiced seaweed. “Hungry?”

* * * *

Julius Klasson’s aircraft was an old
sub-orbital ferry armed with a pair of modified laser mining drills. It could destroy
undefended robotic science stations in a few passes, but its makeshift weapons
barely qualified it as a combat vehicle. That didn’t seem to bother the
survivalist leader, who flew the rusting ferry like he was piloting a strike
fighter.

“You’d do better trading for spare
parts than guns,” I yelled over the rattling ferry’s noisy engines as we
skimmed the ocean at mach four.

A tangled cliff of dinotrees slid
up over the horizon ahead, marking the location of Deadwood’s largest
continent. It straddled the sub-tropics south of the equator, was dissected by snow
capped mountains in the north and stretched to a slender spur of land in the
south that almost reached to the pole.

“If you can find me parts, I’ll
take ‘em,” Klasson said, “But I still want them guns.”

He nosed up, climbing high enough
to pass over the top of the petrified forest before leveling off closer to the
stone canopy than safety or common sense dictated. Occasionally, he dropped
into valleys or skirted tall dinotrees, sometimes flying under massive branches
or through openings that seemed barely large enough for his aircraft.

“When will we be in sensor
range?”

“Soon,” Klasson replied. “The
base is in a caldera. We’ll use the crater wall for cover. You’ll have to make
your own way down from there.”

“Why’d they put it on top of a
volcano?”

“A super volcano,” Klasson
corrected. “It’s been dead a couple of million years. They went there because
it’s the largest open space on the planet, and has a lake in the middle. Cheaper
than clearing land and building a dam.”

I glanced back at Marie and Izin
sitting behind us on cramped jump seats. Marie gave me an anxious look, unimpressed
by Klasson’s reckless flying.

Beside her, Izin had one of his
large eyes close to a window, studying the petrified forest below. “What are
the small flying animals called?” he asked.

“Where?” Marie said excitedly, turning
towards a window.

“There,” Izin said, pointing at
spot in the forest at least ten kilometers away.

Marie squinted, unable to see
what Izin’s naturally telescopic vision had picked out.

“Tree gliders,” Klasson said. “Aggressive
little bastards. Won’t attack a man by ‘
emselves
, but
a pack of them will eat you alive.”

“There are carnivores here?” I
said, surprised any apex predators had survived the Tree Killer mass extinction.

“Hell yeah. They eat rock hoppers
mostly, little rat-like critters that live off moss and fungus, but it’s the saberwolfs
you got to watch out for.”

“Saberwolf?”

“That’s what we call them,”
Klasson said. “Their teeth are sharp as hell and they’re fast little buggers.
Bigger than a dog, quiet as a cat, mean as the devil. They’ll take your leg off
before you even know they’re there.”

“Any in the crater?”

“Yeah, but they stick to the
trees mostly. Nothing on this planet likes open spaces. Be tough for them if
BBI destroys the forest.”