The Devil's Nebula (9 page)

Gorley turned and inclined his head, ever so slightly, to the man seated at the end of the table.

This official, who had yet to speak, cleared his throat and said, “Edward Tracey Carew, formerly of the colony world Temeredes, for your crimes against the Expansion, you are hereby sentenced to death.”

Beside him, Lania gasped. Jed made a whimpering sound, quickly suppressed. Carew felt himself grow hot, but he stared straight ahead into the dark eyes of Commander Gorley, determined not to show the slightest reaction to the death sentence.

“Lania Tara Takiomar, formerly of the colony world Xaria, for your crimes against the Expansion, you are hereby sentenced to death.”

A quick, indrawn breath was Lania’s only reaction. Carew wanted to reach out and take her hand, but his innate reserve stopped him.

“Jedley Neffard, formerly of the Pederson trading station, Perseus Sector, for your crimes against the Expansion, you are hereby sentenced to death.”

Carew turned to look at Jed, to offer a word of consolation, but the small engineer was staring straight ahead, a heartening expression of defiance on his stolid face. Carew felt pride rise in his chest.

Commander Gorley was saying, “...sentences to be carried out at noon, station time. Session adjourned.”

The five men and women rose as one and, without a further word, strode from the platform and passed through the triangular exit.

The guards released the prisoners and escorted them back to the cell.

T
HREE TRAYS OF
food awaited them on a ledge protruding from the cell’s wall.

“The condemned’s last meal,” Lania said.

Jed moved to the corner of the room and curled into a tight ball on the floor, his eyes closed. Lania picked up a tray, then sat down against the wall and stared at the food.

Carew still retained the odd feeling, somewhere deep within him, that something was not right. He wondered if he were deluding himself – the walking dead man, dreaming of a last-minute reprieve. The entire session in the amphitheatre had about it the feeling of something staged, a theatrical event intended to maximise the terror of the accused.

So why did he refuse to believe in the death sentences handed down? Was it merely some psychological survival mechanism, a deep-seated optimism that life was assured and death a far-off thing? But what he’d said earlier to Lania and Jed – the fact that they were still together and had been tried in a session like no other to his knowledge. Surely these facts must count for something? Or maybe he was deluding himself.

He picked up a tray, sat down beside Lania and began eating.

She pushed a fork through limp salad and looked at him. “For some reason, Ed, I have no appetite.” She smiled wanly.

He said, “You were in the military, Lania? Went AWOL and stole one of their smartsuits?”

She shrugged. “It’s a long story,” she said. “Remind me to tell you all about it when we have a little more time.”

“We have a little time now,” he said.

She grunted, “How long have we got? I’ve lost all track. It’s strange, being without my ’suit. I feel as if I’ve had a few vital senses removed, senses I relied on without really thinking about them.” She screwed her eyes shut and Ed watched as tears squeezed out and tracked down her brown cheeks. “Not the only senses I’ll be without, soon,” she whispered.

He patted her knee, a wholly inadequate gesture in the circumstances.

Jed said, “The session began at nine, didn’t it? And the bastard said we’d die at noon. We were in there about an hour or so?”

Lania looked up and dried her eyes on the material of her shift. “So we have a couple of hours left, a little less?”

Jed stared at her. “I never thought it’d end like this,” he said.

Carew smiled at him. “How did you think it’d end?”

The engineer shrugged. “Dunno. In a chase, with the cops after me. Me in a flyer, with a haul on the passenger seat. Speeding through towerpiles on some rich core world. I’d go out in a blaze of glory... I never thought the bastards’d get me.”

A silence stretched. Carew finished the meal and set aside the tray. He found, to his surprise, that he was still hungry. He looked at Lania’s discarded tray and she gestured at him to help himself.

He picked up the tray and began eating.

At last, she said, “I’m young. I’m twenty-eight. I always thought I’d live ’til I was two hundred and die in my villa on the coast on Xaria.” She smiled sadly at her hands knotted on her lap. “Did I tell you that I had a grandma? She lived to be two hundred and two. I remember seeing her a few months before she died. I would’ve been about twelve at the time – she was a hundred and ninety years older than me. And do you know something? She was fit and alert right to the end. She looked about eighty, not a day over.” She fell silent, then said, “And I’ll die at twenty-eight.”

Jed said, “How do you think they’ll do it, boss? Injection? Firing-squad?”

“Those armoured goons,” Lania said, “they’ll take us to some specially prepared chamber and zap us one by one, then flush our bodies out into space.”

Jed looked at Carew. “Reckon that’s what they’ll do, boss?”

Carew found himself shaking his head. He had meant to keep quiet about his suspicion, for fear of raising their hopes only to have them dashed. But now he said, “No. No, I don’t. I don’t think they’ll kill us at all.”

Lania and Jed stared at him. “You don’t?” Jed said. “But that bastard back there, he...”

Carew finished the second tray of food and set it aside. He looked from Jed to Lania. “I know what he said. I know it sounded convincing. Too convincing.”

Lania laughed at that. “What do you mean,
too
convincing?”

“Just that. It was as if they were trying to frighten us, to convince us that we were going to die.” He gained conviction from his own words as he spoke. “I mean, in the normal course of events, three run-of-the-mill small-time chancers like us? Believe me, they wouldn’t go to the trouble of staging such an elaborate set up. They’d have a single-magistrate session and execute us straight away, with none of this five-man charade and back and forth between cell and court and cell and execution chamber. It’s ludicrous! And why the hell keep us together like this? That’d never happen, normally.”

Lania was staring at him, something in her expression suggesting that she wanted more than anything to believe him. “You really think so, Ed? You’re not just saying that to make us feel better?”

He reached out and tapped her bare knee. “That,” he said, “would be cruel.”

Jed was on his feet, pacing the cell. “But why? Why the hell would they sentence us to death if they weren’t going to carry it out?”

Carew nodded, considering his words. He said, “To frighten us, Jed.”

“Then they’ve succeeded,” Lania murmured to herself.

“But why the hell would they want to frighten us, boss?”

“As for their motives...” Something had occurred to him, as he’d held forth, but he was loath to air his supposition. It sounded too unlikely, even to himself. And if he were wrong, then he’d never forgive himself for furnishing Lania and Jed with false hope.

Lania grunted. “I don’t buy it. They want to frighten us, slap our hands and tell us to be good? Then what? Let us go, so we’ll behave like normal citizens in future?” She shook her head. “You’re putting a positive spin on a bad situation, Ed. We’re dead and you know it.”

Jed looked across at him, like a dog kicked in the balls by its owner. “That what you’re trying to do, boss?”

Carew stood up and strode to the viewscreen. He stared out, marvelling at the beauty of the massed stars, the far nebula he would like to explore, one day. He turned and saw that they were both staring at him, something like nascent hope on their faces.

He said, “You can believe what you like, both of you. But I’ll tell you one thing – I’ll tell you what I believe: I believe that we’ll leave this station, together and alive.”

Lania looked up at him, smiling sadly. Jed shuttled a look between Carew and Lania, smiling like a child wanting to believe in fairies despite all the evidence.

Seconds later the door sighed open and a guard in hulking armour waved with his pulse-gun.

Carew led the way, casually, his heart thundering in his ears. They passed down the same labyrinthine corridors and paused before the same triangular sliding door. It slid open and, despite all his fine words back in the cell, a part of him expected to be prodded into a laser-blackened cell where they would be lined up against the wall and shot in the head.

He was surprised to see the familiar expanse of the amphitheatre, and as he stepped into the chamber, he thought that perhaps his optimism had been well-founded.

The guards ushered them to the rectangular holding pen, and again they were held securely by the metal bands around their waists.

Through the viewscreen the immensity of deep space, bedecked by a million stars, promised liberation.

But what if he were wrong? What if this was how the judicial system worked now, even for petty criminals like themselves? What if the prior session had been convened by five sadists who liked to watch people squirm?

The hatch beside the screen opened suddenly, and three men stepped through and seated themselves at the table. Carew was heartened to see that Commander Gorley was not among their number: the bastard would have come to gloat, surely, if the death sentence were to be upheld.

A silver-haired patriarch took the central chair; to his right was a small, thin man in his fifties, of Indian origin. To his left sat a bald-headed albino, whose thin arms and lined face spoke of great age.

The patriarch leaned forward slightly, his fingers laced before him, and spoke quietly in cultivated tones. “For twenty years, Edward Carew, you have utilised
The Paradoxical Poet
in your nefarious errands throughout the Expansion. Be aware that, whatever else happens, the
Poet
will never again know such usage.”

He gestured. The screen flickered and the stars were replaced by a close-up shot of his ship. The very sight of it made his heart leap, despite the patriarch’s ominous words.

As he watched, the view pulled out to show another vessel – a small fighter frigate of the Expansion navy.

Lania said under her breath, “No...”

Carew clenched his fists, knowing what was about to happen but powerless to prevent it.

The frigate fired a prolonged, concerted beam, and before them
The Paradoxical Poet
, his home for twenty years, first became a floating ball of slag, and then violently exploded. In moments, nothing remained to mark where the
Poet
had been, other than scraps of floating debris like metallic confetti. The frigate banked, its terrible duty done, and returned to the station.

Carew was overcome by contradictory emotions. The first was instinctive and wholly understandable – a terrible sadness and regret that the
Poet
had been so wilfully destroyed. The second, following quickly, was a sudden kick of hope: why would the powers-that-be on the station want to show three condemned criminals the destruction of their own ship?

The action did not make sense, in the normal run of events. There had to be some ulterior motive, surely?

He thought of the statuette, which he’d left in his haste on the flight-deck. Gone now, along with the rest of his belongings.

Lania turned to him. “Why?” she whispered. “Why destroy the
Poet
if they’re going to kill us?”

He held her gaze. “Exactly.”

The patriarch and his colleagues turned from the viewscreen and looked down on the condemned.

“In your earlier session,” the patriarch said, “Commander Gorley passed upon you a death sentence, the only sentence available for him in the circumstances. The law by which the judgement was passed was that of the Expansion judiciary, the ultimate arbiter of law and order in the Human Expansion. However, in extraordinary circumstances, decisions arrived at by that law can be overturned. It remains to be seen, in the course of the next hour, whether you will accede to the commutation of your sentences.”

Carew fought not to smile as relief flooded through him.

Jed turned to him and said, “What the hell does
that
mean, boss?”

“I think he’s saying that, if we agree to... to
something
... then we might escape with our lives.”

Lania whispered, “But what the hell do they want, Ed?”

Carew sat up with as much dignity as he could muster and said, “What do you want from us, Mr...?”

“I am Director Yan Nordquist, head of External Operations. My colleagues here” – he gestured first to the albino and then the Indian – “are Dr Galve Aldo, of our psychiatry department, and Anish Choudri, my deputy at External Operations.”

Carew nodded and sat back. “I take it that it isn’t every day you commute the death sentence of three criminals.”

Director Nordquist smiled. He had the easy gestures and mild manner of a seasoned diplomat. “To be honest, this is the first time in living memory that the ruling council has overturned a sentence passed by the Expansion judiciary. We are not in the habit of making exceptions to our rules.”

“But the fact that you’ve done so in this instance suggests... extraordinary circumstances?”

Nordquist paused, then said. “I was informed that I would find you an educated, articulate individual, Captain.”

Carew smiled, without humour. “Not all criminals, as you call us, are uneducated, Director.”

“What surprises me, Captain, is that an educated man would chose to lead the life of a criminal.”

Carew gestured. “If we were to waste time debating the matter,” he said, “then I would first demand a definition of terms: I would demur at being labelled a criminal, to begin with; and more, I would contend that a life opposing what I see as a totalitarian regime chose me, rather than the other way around.”

Nordquist smiled; Carew was upset by the thought that, in other circumstances, he might have allowed himself to like the Director.