The Devil's Nebula (14 page)

“Seen many?”

“My first posting was to Boronia, a prison planet. You don’t exactly conform to stereotype. A dour, ageing captain, a fat slob of an engineer, and a beautiful pilot. Not exactly the Dorrigo Gang.”

Lania smiled. “That’s probably because we don’t see ourselves as criminals.” She shrugged. “We just sail close to the wind.”

Gina stepped from the cubicle and pulled a fresh one-piece from a hold-all. She dressed, then assembled the armour around herself again. Lania found herself regretting that the show was over.

“That’s not what I heard, girl. Word is you’re dangerous killers who wouldn’t think twice about...” She drew her finger across her throat.

“That’s rubbish. We’ve never killed a soul. We wouldn’t.”

Fully-armoured now, Gina dropped into a squat before Lania and smiled. “No? But you supplied arms to the rebels on Ballantyne’s World?”

“Before my time,” Lania said. “I’m sure the captain had his reasons. All we’ve done is salvage a few wrecks – and I admit one or two of those might have been classed as theft.” She shrugged. “Run some samizdat literature between colonies. Transported a rogue telepath. And then we went to Hesperides on a damned-fool errand for an art dealer. When we lifted off, the authorities pounced.”

“Tough.”

“Even tougher – we were sentenced to death, with a get-out clause: take the
Hawk
into Vetch territory, or die.” She gestured. “Didn’t take a lot of thinking about.”

“You shouldn’t complain, girl. I’m here on routine duty – I didn’t do anything wrong, just ordered to get my shit together and here I am.”

“You a conscript, or did you volunteer?”

“Volunteer. Dreamed about being in the militia since I was this high. Thought about nothing else. Got my grades, was accepted at the military academy on Borussia, then trained on Macarthur’s Landfall.”

Lania considered the woman’s dancing blue eyes. She said, “That bastard Colonel Lansdowne still terrorising the recruits?”

Gina’s eyes widened. “You know Lansdowne?”

“I was on Macarthur’s, too. Only I wasn’t a volunteer.”

She liked the woman, even though she was a grunt, and she would have happily confided in her had the ship’s alarm not blared through the gym just then.

“Shit, what the hell?” Gina said, moving like lightning for the exit.

Lania followed, making a detour to her berth to collect her smartsuit. She was still pulling it on when she entered the flight-deck.

Jed was in his sling, hands dancing over the controls. Choudri and Gorley were peering at a screen, Ed beside them.

“What’s going on, Ed?”

“We’ve been detected. A Vetch ship’s on our tail.”

The image of a squat, black and yellow Vetch interceptor appeared on the viewscreen, tiny against the grey void. Choudri said, “It’s about a minute behind us. Not yet within firing range, but those things carry sufficient...”

Lania was already in her sling and integrating her suit with the ship’s smartcore. Within seconds, her awareness of the activity on the flight-deck fell away as she felt the ship slip into place around her. The engines became her heart, the logic-matrix her brain. She lost her sense of self; she was now, to all intents, the
Hawk
.

She heard a voice: her own. “Power, Jed?”

“Achieving maximum,” she heard, as if from far away.

She gave a subliminal command and the
Hawk
accelerated. She felt it surge; they had been cruising at something like a third of their maximum speed; now they were at eighty per cent of their potential and accelerating. She knew it was only an analogue, her smartsuit channelling the sensation of tremendous speed to her sensorium, but she felt as if she were flat on her back and sliding at speed down a luge track. She was ten again, with her father in the mountains of Xaria, and she was laughing breathlessly at the top of her lungs, screaming with the heady delight of her speed.

Behind the
Hawk
, the Vetch interceptor accelerated in a bid to keep pace, but little by little it was falling behind – and Lania felt a surge of triumph. The Vetch had sent their best to nail the
Hawk
, and they were leaving the interceptor in their wake. A minute later, the vessel failed to register on the
Hawk’s
sensors.

Lania remained melded with the smartcore, reluctant to relinquish the link. She maintained the
Hawk
at eighty per cent of its maximum speed and monitored the running of the engines, feeling their power as if they were a part of herself. She summoned a schematic of the space through which they were travelling, and in her mind’s eye the yin-yang shape appeared: the flashing red light that was the
Hawk
was now almost three quarters of the way through Vetch territory.

She eased the engines back to something like fifty per cent of their capacity and withdrew from the meld. Her senses returned, the awareness of her surroundings. She closed her eyes and heard sounds, the steady thrum of the drives, soft voices in the background.

Choudri was speaking. “...philosophers say that the void is the reality towards which we are all destined, Captain Carew. Nirvana. Some pilots claim they attain oneness with the void, an abolition of the self.”

“With respect, Director,” Ed replied, “as a materialist, I cannot accept the idea.”

Choudri laughed. “I give thanks that I am not a materialist. My religion gives me another dimension to existence. I would be loath to think that this is all there is to being alive. How can you live with it, Captain?”

Ed was silent for a time, before replying cryptically, “We are all prisoners of our experiences, Anish.”

Lania opened her eyes. Choudri stood at the apex of the triangular flight-deck, staring out into the immensity of the void, hands clasped behind his back. Ed sat with Jed at a small table, playing some kind of board game.

She eased herself from her sling and stretched. Choudri turned. “Welcome back, Lania.”

Ed smiled at her. “Good work. We’re impressed.”

She smiled. “Thank the
Hawk
, Ed. All I did was give a few commands. The auto-pilot would have done just as good a job.”

“You know that is not true,” Choudri said. “It would not have responded as quickly, as adeptly. It’s a machine. The human element, I think, is necessary.”

“How long have I been in there?”

Jed looked up from the board game. “Just under twenty-four hours, Lania. We’ve had a couple of meals and slept.”

“A day? You’re joking, right? I thought more like a couple of hours.”

“How do you feel?” Ed asked.

“An odd combination of wired and tired. I’m going to lie down. Let’s just hope no more Vetch ships try to apprehend us.”

She made her way to her berth and stretched out on the bunk, hands laced under her head. She recalled a stray memory from the meld. She was ten and on a summer vacation with her father, this time swimming in the sea beside their holiday villa.

She realised she was crying. She sat up, wiped away the tears and hurried to the lounge for a tray of food. She took it back to her room and ate alone, relishing the curry – her first meal for over a day.

A chime sounded at the door. She hoped it was Ed, come to talk to her. For some reason, right now she wanted his soft voice, his wise words, to console her.

She commanded the door to open. Gina Alleghri stood in the corridor, wearing a form-hugging blue jump-suit and carrying a flask of wine.

“Heard about your stint in the sling, girl. Thought you might like a drink.”

Lania smiled. “You’re joking. I could kill for one. Come in.”

Gina sat beside her on the bunk and poured two tumblers of red wine. They toasted the
Hawk
and laughed.

Gina lay a hand on Lania’s knee, smiling at her. “Where were we, Lania? I think you were telling me that you were on Macarthur’s Landfall too, only you weren’t a volunteer.”

Lania lay a hand on top of Gina’s. “Mind if we don’t talk about the past? Only, it’s kind of painful.”

“Hokay. So, what shall we talk about?”

Lania felt something catch in her throat as she said, “Let’s not talk.”

She reached out and touched the woman’s cheek, a mere brush of her fingertips, but it was enough to bring Gina’s lips close to hers.

They kissed, and Lania felt a sudden need deep within her.

CHAPTER NINE

A
LL THAT DAY
, ever since sunrise, a dozen Flyers had circled in the air high above the clearing.

Now the great sun was half-set, a vast bloody dome straddling the horizon, and the Flyers moved away, sailing high above the jungle – all, that is, but for one of their number.

Maatja sat with her people in the clearing, as the heat of the day diminished. Leah and Rahn were positioned at the front of the gathering, cross-legged. She ignored her friends’ idle speculation as the Flyer disengaged itself from the procession heading north; it circled the clearing once, then came in slowly to land before the gathering.

High in the sky, the Flyer had appeared small, certainly no larger than a family hut. But as it descended, it seemed to expand and expand. Now it settled before them on the clearing, almost twice the length of a long-house, a bloated grey monstrosity like a Harvester, but without the tentacles at the head-end, or the sphincter at the other. Along its flank was a string of what looked like suckers, and at its front end what might have been tiny eyes sunk into the grey flesh of its domed face. Maatja could make out no evidence of a mouth or nose.

She wondered what important information the creature wanted to impart and how it would speak to them without a mouth.

The Flyer settled, its flanks rolling outwards as it sank onto the ground. A gasp went up from the crowd. An air of excitement filled the clearing like the charge in the air before a thunderstorm.

As she watched, Leah and Rahn stood and moved towards the domed front end of the Flyer. They paused before the creature and each held out a hand and touched its wrinkled grey hide.

They held this pose for perhaps a minute. Beside her, Jaar whispered, “They’re communicating telepathically with the Flyer.”

Another boy said, “Telepathy’s impossible!”

“No it isn’t,” Maatja corrected. “My father told me that there were telepaths aboard the starship that brought our people here.”

Leah and Rahn dropped their arms and backed away from the Flyer. They sat down before it, staring at the creature’s blank grey face.

Seconds later, something happened which brought a gasp from everyone in the clearing.

Beneath the two deep-set eyes in the head of the Flyer, a horizontal split appeared. At first it resembled a mouth, a pair of lips opening in a long grin. Then it widened to resemble a wound, scarlet with blood.

Then something slipped from the bloody gap and everyone jumped in startlement and revulsion.

Maatja felt her heart beating quickly as she stared.

A small, upright creature stood before the gathering, a spindly thing on two legs, with long arms and a big, domed head. It was blue-purple, like a Sleer but much smaller. Its body was naked and glistened with what might have been streaks of blood and a white, fatty substance.

It stood on bent legs, staring around the clearing with big black eyes; it had a tiny nose and slit lips and looked, Maatja thought, evil.

Her father had once told her that the Weird came in many forms. They were able to mould flesh just as humans had once used metals to make machines. Her father said that the Weird made their people to suit the various environments they inhabited, which was why the Flyers were able to travel through space. Maatja thought that the Flyer looked like a living creature – but was it nothing more than a fleshy spaceship that contained ugly little manikins like this one?

The creature took a step forward, then another, bobbing horribly at the knees as it moved towards where Leah and Rahn were seated.

When it reached them, it dropped into a crouch before the Elders.

It stared into their eyes and spoke.

Maatja was too far away to hear its harsh, rasping words. She stared intently at its face, but the creature seemed to articulate whatever it had to say without the slightest trace of expression. Its big eyes stared and its lips moved minimally as its rasping whisper imparted information to the Elders.

Maatja willed it to finish, so that Leah and Rahn might communicate to their people what the creature had said.

She looked around her and smiled at the open-mouthed, staring faces of the children in her group.

The creature stopped speaking and climbed slowly to its feet – like an old man with joint problems – and moved back to the Flyer. Maatja stared in wonder as it reached out, arms above its head like a diver about to leap into a pool. It leaned forward, inserted its hands into the bloody slit in the Flyer’s head and appeared to be sucked off its feet. In a moment, it had vanished.

Slowly, with no apparent means of power, the Flyer rose into the air. Silently it turned and climbed and Maatja watched as it sailed off over the treetops, its bloated outline silhouetted against the light of the dying sun.

Leah stood and turned to face her people, Rahn beside her.

“The Weird,” Leah said, “came with important news.”

She paused, and a flurry of excited speculation passed around the gathering. She silenced it with a gesture and continued.

“Humans from the Expansion are on their way to World,” she said, and hurried on. “They are coming to aid the Weird, to help expand the beneficence of the Weird throughout the Expansion.”

Someone close to Maatja whispered, “What does ben... beneficence mean?”

Jaar replied, “It means food. The Weird want to give phar to all the humans across the Expansion.”

Maatja looked at the boy. He sounded authoritative, but she didn’t believe his explanation.

Leah was saying, “The humans will come here in a great golden ship. Though the people in the ship are one people, they are divided – some are good, and others bad. Some will help us, and others will not. The Weird want us to accommodate them as our guests, until the humans move to the lair, downriver.”