Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach (19 page)

He found a likely building and climbed the steps onto a wraparound veranda. He tested the front door, which swung open at his touch. He stepped quickly inside. Windows looked out over the square and to the left and right: he would have a perfect view of the approach of the tree frogs.

He slipped his ferronnière from his jacket and looped it around his head. He slid the activation stud, took a deep breath and scanned. Nothing. Absolute mind silence.

He checked the charge of his laser and powered it up. He leaned against the wall, peering through the front window. All was silent again,
Judi
and the scientists’ domes an incongruously modern intrusion into a scene that might have pre-dated the age of star flight: a moonlit square, ancient weatherboard buildings, a placid lake...

His wrist-com throbbed, and a line of text scrolled across the screen:
Two Ajantans have emerged from the cover of trees at eleven o’clock relative to my position and at a distance of three hundred metres and closing. Now approaching the square...

Seconds later the cerebral signature of their alien minds flared in his consciousness. He winced, almost fell to his knees with the pain; he detected nothing at all like human emotions, but a screeching mind-noise like migraine. He stepped across the room and leaned against the frame of the side window, peering out.

His wrist-com throbbed again:
Ajantans one hundred metres away and closing...

As they approached, so their mind-noise increased. It was like a nightmare he’d suffered once or twice, no doubt occasioned by accidental contact with alien minds: a feeling that his human consciousness was being overwhelmed by a chaotic alien sensibility which threatened to drive out his rational, human-centred view of reality. He wondered if this was what Miro Tesnolidek lived with every day of his life.

He fought to quell the feeling now, and concentrate on the view through the window. His pulse pounded deafeningly in his ears. He was sweating, the laser slick in his grip.

And here came the first Ajantan...

The alien bobbed into view fifty metres away, sliding with silky, reptilian fluidity along the side of a building. It wore a silver covering on its chest and carried some kind of rifle. His tele-ability told him that the second alien was out of sight on the far side of the building.

The mind-pain increased, distracting him. Once he had them both in view, he could dispense with the ferronnière.

He considered taking out the first Ajantan right away, but decided that would only alert the second alien, spook the creature and send it scuttling back into the cover of the forest. The last thing he wanted was to chase the alien through a darkened wood.

The first Ajantan came to the corner of the building and peered around, looking across the square to the ship. It spoke into some kind of hand-held com device then moved off at a brisk trot towards the ship. The second Ajantan remained hidden behind the building - judging by its cerebral signature - no doubt covering the first. He was dealing with experienced combatants.

He stepped silently across the dusty floorboards towards the front window and peered out.

Judi
communicated. He read:
An alien approaching, twenty metres, fifteen...

He whispered, “I see it.”

The Ajantan reached
Judi
and moved around her, stopping from time to time to peer up at the viewscreens. It moved with an easy bobbing gait which gave it the appearance of being constantly cautious, ready to take flight at any second.

It made a circuit of the ship and stopped, turning to look around the square. At one point its sweeping gaze took in the building where Harper was concealed... and moved on. He realised he’d been holding his breath, and released it with relief.

He swore to himself, urging the second alien to show itself.

The alien beside the ship raised a hand again, speaking into its com. He felt the agonising locus that was the second alien’s mind move away from where it was hiding and approach the square. At last...

Seconds later a smaller Ajantan scurried across the square and joined the first.

Harper raised his laser, took aim. His left hand shook. He was unable to concentrate with the white-noise of the alien minds in his head, so he lowered the rifle and switched off his ferronnière. The immediate cessation of the screeching migraine was blissful.

He took a breath. He felt calm, poised, without the alien mind-noise in his head. He raised the laser again and aimed at the Ajantans. The bigger one first. He flashed on the scene in the alien lair, at the rotting remains of the human corpses strewn around the perimeter. These were two Ajantans who would never again have the pleasure...

He sighted the larger alien, aimed at the centre of its skull, and fired.

The blue vector lanced across the square. He saw the alien’s head dissolve in an atomised spray of fluid, and a split second later fired at the second Ajantan. He hit its chest. His beam lanced off its silver garment – obviously body armour – and ricocheted into the air. The alien rolled and came up firing. A bolus of fire screamed across the square and hit the window frame to Harper’s right. He fired again, this time aiming for the creature’s head, and missed.

The Ajantan surprised Harper by racing towards him, firing as it came. He had expected the alien to retreat, seek cover. He had to hand it to the bastard...

Three quick gouts of fire set the façade of the building ablaze, and Harper retreated to the back of the room. A doorway gave access to a moonlit rear room. He stepped into it and crossed to a door, kicked it open and ran outside. He rounded the house to the square and stopped at the corner. He peered round. The alien was climbing the steps to the veranda with extreme caution. Harper raised his laser, sighted the creature’s head, and fired.

The alien turned at the same time, just as laser vector blew its skull apart.

Harper sank to his haunches and took deep breaths. He felt his pulse pound through his body, and wanted to laugh out loud in the heady relief of having survived. He stood up and approached the Ajantan’s corpse. It had fallen across the blazing veranda and within minutes would be consumed by the pyre of its own making.

He walked across the square to the ship and inspected the remains of the second alien. It lay spread-eagled amidst the debris of its cranium, and despite its humanoid shape he could see it as nothing other than animal.

He raised his wrist-com and got through to Zeela.

It was a minute before she answered, fuddled by sleep. “Mmm...? Den? But where are you?”

“Listen. Get Di Mannetti to drive you back to the township. We’re leaving.”

“But... where are you, Den?”

“At the ship. There’s been developments. The Ajantans came down.”

“Den!” She sounded frantic. “What happened? Are you...?”

“I’m fine, but I can’t say the same about the Ajantans. Just get yourself down here and we’ll be on our way.”

He cut the connection before she had time to reply.

He was about to command
Judi
to lower the ramp when he heard a sound behind him. He turned – but too late. Something hit him across the back of the head. He cried out and fell. While he was down and struggling to get up, he felt someone wrest the laser from his grip and pull his wrist-com from his arm.

His initial confused thought was that one of the scientific team had followed him down here and for some bizarre reason attacked him...

He turned sluggishly and sat up.

“Stop!”

The sound of the voice told him that his assailant was not human.

He looked up and saw an Ajantan five metres away. It held both his laser and its own bell-muzzled incendiary weapon, levelled at him.

Very clever... or had he been stupid to deactivate his ferronnière when he had? The Ajantan shuttle had contained three aliens, with one hanging back to cover its fellows.

And Zeela and Di Mannetti would get here in ten minutes or so, and drive straight into the mess he’d allowed to develop.

His only hope was that
Judi
had been monitoring events and would get through to Zeela to apprise her of the situation.

Failing that... How could he hope to disarm the alien when it possessed two weapons and his wrist-com?

He would begin by talking to the alien, establishing a dialogue, and hope that its command of his language extended beyond the single word it had used so far. He was unable to tell, by staring at its face, just what emotions might be passing through its alien brain. Its big, dark eyes stared at him and its long mouth hung open to reveal two rows of needle-sharp teeth.

He had summarily killed two of its fellow... He wondered if it might seek revenge.

“What do you want? You followed me...”

The alien twitched, raising its weapons. It hissed, “The girl!”

Harper shook his head, feigning ignorance. “What girl?”

“You took her! The girl. Our...” It spat a word he had no hope of catching, something sibilant in its own language. “The girl...” it went on, “belongs to us!”

“She belongs to no one. You do not own her.”

“We own her! By Ajantan law she is our...” That word again, which sounded like
shisk
...

Harper smiled. “But we are no longer on Ajanta,” he pointed out, “so your barbaric laws no longer hold.”

The alien fired. The bolus of fire roared past Harper’s head, missing him by a metre. He flinched away from its heat, feeling the skin of his face burn and his hair singe.

“Where is girl!”

He could always claim that Zeela was no longer with him... but he thought twice about this. If the Ajantan believed him, then it just might consider him surplus to requirements and, to avenge its dead fellows, execute him on the spot.

He might be better able to overcome the alien if he could lure it aboard his ship.

“The girl is in there,” he said, indicating
Judi
over his shoulder.

“Get her out!”

Harper smiled to himself. “Very well... Either let me enter the ship and find her, or give me my wrist-com.” He pointed to the device which the alien had strapped around its own arm.

The Ajantan hesitated, watching him with its vast eyes. It blinked, its eyelids nictitating sideways.

Of course, Harper thought, it could always order me to lower the ramp, then kill me and enter the ship in search of Zeela...

“No!” it said at last.

“No to what?” he asked. “To me entering the ship, or you giving me my wrist-com.”

It blinked again and spat, “Both!”

Harper smiled. No fool, this one...

“Okay,” he said, “then how about this: we both go into the ship to find her?”

Surely, in the confines of the ship, he’d sooner or later have the opportunity to overwhelm the Ajantan?

The alien regarded him inscrutably, assessing the idea.

At last it bobbed its head. “Yes,” it said.

Harper let out a relieved breath. “Good. So... I’ll need my wrist-com to order my ship to lower the ramp.”

The alien was considering the request when, seconds later, the sound of an engine intruded upon the dawn hush. Harper cursed his luck.

The engine’s roar increased as the vehicle approached the square.

The Ajantan crouched lower and backed off. It covered Harper with his own laser and swung the incendiary device in the direction of the approach road.

This changed things. Harper worked on the assumption that when Zeela and Di Mannetti drove into the square, unsuspecting, the alien would have no second thoughts about killing him and the doctor and taking Zeela.

He felt impotent, seated on the ground with his head throbbing painfully. But what would the alien’s reaction be if he climbed to his feet? He elected not to find out.

The alien spat, “Who is... this?”

Harper shook his head. “I don’t know.”

To claim ignorance was the safest option. He could always have tried to spook the alien and said that whoever it was was well armed... But then the Ajantan might have thrown caution to the wind and fired on the car as soon as it appeared.

Seconds later the vehicle came into view between two buildings at the far end of the square.

With a kick of hope, Harper saw that there was only one person in the car – Di Mannetti, seated behind the wheel. That could only be
Judi’s
doing; she had assessed the trouble he was in and communicated the fact to Zeela.

But where was she?

The car slowed and came to a halt twenty metres from the alien. The creature’s domed head rotated from Harper to the car.

He calculated what he would do now if he were the alien, and he didn’t like what he came up with. He, Harper, was a dangerous liability who could be dispensed with. But how long would it take the alien to realise this?

Should he act now, surge to his feet and charge in a zigzag sprint towards the Ajantan and trust that its aim was aberrant?

In the car, Di Mannetti sat very still behind the wheel, then raised her hands above her head.

It was probably a sensible thing for her to do, in the circumstances – but, Harper realised sickeningly, it freed the alien to act.

The Ajantan turned to face him, lifted the laser and fired. Harper rolled sideways, but the blue light slammed into his flank with indescribable pain. He cried out and hit the ground. He heard a piercing cry, followed by a second blast of laser fire. He thought that the Ajantan had turned the weapon on Di Mannetti, but when he forced his eyes open and looked at the alien he saw that it was no longer upright. It lay on the ground, in several pieces, and a slight, slim figure was running across the square towards him, a laser rifle clutched to her chest.

He tried to sit up and reassure Zeela that he was fine, but the pain in his side stopped him. He looked down, shocked at what he saw. There was a gaping hole in the material of his jacket, and a corresponding laceration in the flesh beneath – and a mass of puce innards, highlighted in the light of the rising sun, was bulging from the wound.

Zeela paused before him and he was shocked by the horror on her face. She reached out and cupped his cheek. He saw her lips move as she said his name, but there was something wrong with his hearing. Everything was silent. And his vision was failing too... Zeela’s grief-stricken face was fading. Again he tried to struggle upright. He wanted to tell her that he was fine, but another wave of pain shot through his body and oblivion claimed him.