The Devil's Nebula (19 page)

She shucked off her suit, then took a quick shower and rode the chute to the lounge, feeling a little better. Well, cleaner, at any rate.

Ed sat on the banquette beneath the strip screen, which showed a breathtaking view of the supergiant and the swelling blue world. He had a drink clasped in both hands, and his eyes were on her as she sat down opposite and sipped her own coffee.

“Mmm... that’s good.” She smiled up at him. “Amazing how good coffee tastes. I suppose it’s familiar.”

“What happened?”

She considered the events of the past couple of hours, then told Carew what they’d found. “The colonists are gone, Ed.”

They discussed the situation, Carew adding nothing constructive to what had passed back and forth aboard the colony ship.

“In the circumstances,” he said, “speculation is pretty futile.”

She was silent for a time, then said, “Ed.”

He smiled at her. “What is it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t get frightened easily. You know me. What did you say, once? That I didn’t have the imagination to be frightened?”

“I said that? I don’t remember.”

“Well, you did. Anyway, maybe I have the imagination now. I’m frightened. Whatever happened to the colonists... They were taken, Ed. Taken, and by something that might still be...”

He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. When was the last time he’d done that? She smiled. He said, “You’ve got to remember that this was a long time ago, Lania. What, seventy or eighty years? The chances are that whatever took them is long gone now. And the
Hawk
and the militia pack a hell of a lot of fire power. The
Procyon
was virtually unarmed.” He smiled. “Don’t let it get to you. We’ll be fine, okay?”

She finished her coffee, asked if he’d like another, and fetched two more.

They sat and chatted.

At one point he said, “I’m sorry if what I said earlier hurt you, about Gina.”

She shrugged. “I know you meant well, Ed. I was being over-sensitive.” She smiled at him. “I just can’t see that Gina is using me. We’re just having a fling. It’s fun, nothing more.”

“It’s just that I don’t want to see you getting hurt, like that time on... I’m getting old. I can’t remember where it was. You fell head over heels for that police cadet.”

She looked away. “Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. It was the first time it affected me like that.”

“You wanted me to find him a job on the
Poet
.”

“Don’t! You were right – he was a bastard. One of the few times when your dislike of authority figures paid off.”

“It was seeing him with at least three other women while stringing you along that I didn’t like.”

She looked at him and laughed. “Ed, it wasn’t that that bothered me. He wanted to borrow my smartsuit to help out on a case – that’s the only reason he was interested in me.”

“You never told me that.”

She shrugged. “I don’t tell you everything, Ed.”

“I’m sorry. I must sound like your father sometimes.” He hesitated, and she feared he was going to say that she’d never spoken about her father – then Commander Gorley and Director Choudri entered the lounge and sat down at the table.

Choudri fetched two coffees.

Ed said, “An eventful foray, by the sounds of it?”

Lania watched Choudri sip his coffee. “Has Lania filled you in?”

Ed nodded.

“There’s not a lot to add,” Choudri said, “other than the fact that Novak has been through the
Procyon
’s core.”

“And?”

“Nothing. It’s wiped. Which is unusual in itself, but added to the fact that all the back-up pins are missing, along with a com-stack.”

“Aliens interested in our technology?” Carew said. “Or the cultists being ultra-cautious and not wanting anything to fall into the wrong hands?”

Lania said, “Either of which sound highly unlikely.”

“Have they analysed the remains of the colonist you found?” Carew asked.

Gorley nodded. “He was killed by a weapon we’ve never come across. Lasers don’t do that kind of damage, or pulse-guns. His bones were fused to the wall.”

“Acid?”

Gorley lifted his thin shoulders. “We don’t know, and to be honest I don’t want to come across the creatures responsible.”

Lania could see Carew stopping himself from saying what he was thinking, and she could well imagine those thoughts. She was thinking them herself: that the Marshall’s sudden squeamishness was odd in someone responsible for the punishment of those he considered enemies of the Expansion.

She stood up and said, “I’ll leave you to your speculations, gentlemen. See you later, Ed.”

She left the lounge and took the upchute. She had intended to lie down and rest for a while, but as she was passing Gina’s berth she heard the sound of the shower’s water jet. She paused and knocked on the door.

“Come in, Lania.”

Smiling, she slipped inside. “How did you know it was me?”

Gina turned in the shower stall, laughing. “Who else was it likely to be? Care to join me?”

“I’ve just showered,” Lania said. “But I could be persuaded to have another one.”

She shucked off her smartsuit, left it in a puddle on the floor and stepped into the shower. They kissed, and Gina slipped a soapy hand between Lania’s legs.

Later they lay on the bed, Lania’s head on the older woman’s shoulder.

“What’s it like, working for the militia these days?” She thought back twelve years, to the months and months of discipline, the penalties for breaking the rules. She’d had to get away.

Gina pulled a face with the effort of peering down at her. “Probably much like it was in your day.”

She’d often wondered what life might have been like if she’d toed the line and worked at it: she would have a cushy job somewhere, maybe even settled down with someone, kids...

The thought repelled her and at the same time made her laugh.

“What?” Gina asked.

“Just thinking about what might have been, if I’d not got away and hooked up with Ed.”

Gina said, “For an ex-militia-woman and a feared criminal, Lania, you’re nothing but a little pussycat.”

“Grrr,” she said. “A pussycat with claws.”

“And one that likes lapping.”

She thought about events aboard the
Procyon
. “Your Captain seems like a real bastard, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Evans? Oh, he’s okay. He’s just another prick in love with his rank, is all. He’s good at his job.”

Lania smiled. “A good Expansion man,” she said.

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

She thought about her father. “No,” she said at last. “No, nothing at all.”

“Hey, are you going to tell me how you managed to skip Macarthur’s Landfall and get off-planet without tripping the slightest security rig?”

She smiled and stroked Gina’s cheek. She wondered why she hadn’t told her yet. Was it something to do with what Ed had said, about being careful? Didn’t she trust the big, sexy militia-woman?

“Maybe one day,” she said.

Lania’s earpiece bleeped. It was across the room, discarded with her smartsuit. She jumped off the bed and slipped it into her ear.

“Yes?”

“Lania,” Ed said, “get yourself down to the flight-deck. I thought you’d like to see this.”

“What is it?” She struggled into her smartsuit.

“You’ll find out soon enough. And a message from Commander Gorley: we’re taking off in thirty minutes.”

“On my way.” She dressed, kissed Gina on the lips and slipped from the room, wondering what Ed wanted her to see. She took the downchute and stepped onto the flight-deck.

She stopped as she saw what was on the viewscreen. “What the hell are those?” she asked.

Ed was standing before the screen, with Choudri and Gorley to his right and left. Jed was in his sling, staring at the viewscreen. Lania slipped into her own sling.

Choudri half turned towards her, as if not wanting to tear himself away from the screen. “Thomas detected them an hour ago, while doing telemetry analysis on the blue planet. He saw them drifting through the upper atmosphere. This shot is magnified ten thousand times.”

There were a dozen of the things, great bloated ovals, dark grey in colouration, floating in procession through the upper clouds of the blue world. Their hides were puckered and striated with wrinkles, and here and there on their adipose, limbless bodies she made out what looked like suckers.

“They’re alive, aren’t they?”

“Without doubt,” Carew said.

“How big are they?” It was impossible to tell the size of the creatures, with nothing else in the shot.

Choudri said, “Approximately fifty metres long, twenty broad and high.”

“They’re huge.”

“Even more amazing,” the Indian went on, “is that they’re space-going. Thomas saw them when they were in orbit, high above the blue planet.”

“You don’t think they’re...” – she thought of a phrase to describe them – “biological spacecraft, with the real aliens inside them?”

“Who knows? I suppose anything’s possible.”

They watched the floaters drift leisurely across the screen, one behind the other – not dissimilar to a procession of terrestrial elephants, albeit that these creatures were without tails or trunks, or legs for that matter.

They dropped behind the cloud cover and vanished from sight.

Lania said, “Surely they can’t be the creatures that abducted the colonists?”

“Unless they posses telekinetic abilities,” Commander Gorley said dryly. “But they might not be the only alien creatures dwelling on the blue world.”

She looked at him. “You want us to go down there?”

“That was the general idea, yes.”

She looked at Carew, who was holding his chin, looking thoughtful. “If we go in carefully, cautiously, Lania. And get out at the first sign of trouble.”

Gorley nodded. “That goes without saying.”

Lania integrated with the smartcore. “To the blue planet it is, then.”

She gave the command for the
Hawk
to lift-off.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HERE WAS AN
air of excitement and anticipation among the fissure people, such as Maatja had never experienced before. Everyone was talking about the starship coming from the Expansion and what this might mean for World. Jaar, the eldest of her group of friends, held forth as if he were an Elder-in-waiting and declared that as the first humans to experience the Weird, it would be the duty of their people to go forth into the human Expansion and spread the good word.

Privately, Maatja thought this unlikely. The Weird were powerful enough to spread the ‘good word,’ or to enslave humans across the galaxy, without the help of her people.

But she said nothing, merely smiled to herself as Jaar went on self-importantly.

At midday, with the giant sun directly overhead and everyone seeking the shade, Maatja saw her parents leave their hut and hurry to that of the Elders, Leah and Rahn. They were greeted with solemn hugs at the door and stepped inside.

Maatja left her patch of shade beside the family hut and slipped behind the huts, running parallel with the jungle until she came to the Elders’ hut.

She crouched beside the wall, found a split in the weave and peeped through.

Her parents were sitting cross-legged before Leah and Rahn, and they were all eating dried phar.

Rahn was speaking; Maatja strained to hear his words. “...what the Weird want from us, but I do know in my heart of hearts that we are here to do their bidding. They saved us when we came to World, fed us and showed us the ways of this strange place.”

Her parents raised gourds of liquid, murmured ritual thanks, and drank.

Leah said, “It is my time of Passing very soon. I will go to serve the Weird.”

Maatja stared through the weave and saw her father smile. “I will be there already, Leah.”

Maatja’s heart jumped into her throat and she felt a pounding pulse at her temple.

Her mother gripped her father’s hand. “We are so proud,” she murmured.

“To be one of the Chosen,” Leah said, “is an honour not accorded to everyone.”

Her father said, “But why me?”

Rahn smiled. “I can only assume that you have exhibited qualities the Weird deem worthy,” he said. “Loyalty and bravery, diligence and insight. You are a worthy Chosen One.”

Maatja felt tears spring to her eyes. Her throat felt sore with the effort of suppressing her sobs.

“Have you prepared?” Rahn asked.

Her father said, “All that remains is to tell Maatja and Hahta.”

There was a pause, then Leah said, “Maatja is a singular girl.”

“We love her, but...” Her mother hesitated. “But she is not like the others. She spends time alone, in the jungle.”

Rahn said, “We know. We have observed her. We know that she has contact with the Outcasts. Yesterday we sent a tracker to follow her, hoping that she might lead us to their dwelling place. But the boy she was with was too fleet.”

From the expression on her mother’s face, she clearly had no knowledge of this. Her father reached out and took her hand, consolingly.

Leah said, “There will be time in future to trace the Outcasts and eradicate them, and Maatja will play her part in this.”

Maatja crouched, frozen. She was gripped by fear. She felt as if the slightest move, the merest breath, might be detected by the adults.

They knew of her meetings with Kavan
.
They were using her, biding their time before they took the opportunity to follow her to the Outcasts’ tree-top retreat
.

She heard stirrings within the hut: her parents were rising to leave.

She stood shakily and ran back to her own hut and dropped to her place in the shade outside. She curled up and closed her eyes and tried to come to terms with what she had learned that morning.

Her father was leaving them for the lair of the Weird, one of the Chosen. And her people knew that she was in contact with the Outcasts.

She knew, then, that she had to be very careful in her meetings with Kavan, or not meet him at all in future, for fear of bringing death to his people.