Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach (32 page)

She stood quickly, strode to the viewscreen and stared out.

“Look,” she said, pointing at
Judi
.

“What does he want with it?” he asked.

She turned to him, resuming her perch on the console. “What do you know about your ship, Harper?”

He shrugged, uneasy when it came to discussing
Judi
with a stranger. “Enough,” he said.

“Like, who it belonged to before you... appropriated it?”

“A commander of the Expansion navy. It was his private vessel.”

“And before that?”

“Pass.”

She smiled at him. “It belonged to a thief, a human from the world of Capadoccia. Not your regular thief, either. He had ambitions. His territory was the hinterland – the no man’s land – between Expansion space and Vetch territory. He prospected, and stole from, the planets in that disputed region. To cut a long story short, he raided a Vetch experimental weapons technology lab on a sequestered asteroid and came away with... for want of a better expression, a super-weapon. Worse, he destroyed the facility in his wake and killed over fifty top Vetch scientists. In so doing he managed to set back the weapons program some fifty years. What the Vetch scientists were working on was ultra-secret, and every scientist working on the project perished... All understanding of the weapon was lost in the raid and the subsequent slaughter.

“We don’t know how he did it, and the Vetch, quite understandably, aren’t about to enlighten us. Anyway, he stored the weapons system aboard his ship and high-tailed it out of Vetch territory, thinking he’d snatched the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

“Only?”

She nodded. “Only the weapon was self-aware, the latest Vetch AI technology. It had certain inbuilt safety mechanisms. So it closed itself down and sealed itself in behind an impermeable barrier.”

He nodded slowly. “Hold two. No wonder I’ve never been able to get in there.”

“The thief, or prospector, found himself in a bar on Maddison one evening, and started bragging... but he happened to brag to the wrong person. It’s never wise to tell a commander in the Expansion marine corps that you posses a super-weapon... albeit one that you can’t access. The commander arranged for the thief to be... dealt with, let’s say, and appropriated the ship.”

My ship, Harper thought. “So why didn’t the Expansion authorities take it apart?”

“Because the commander had morals as loose as the person he stole the ship from. He kept the knowledge of the weapon to himself, and, on the quiet, employed engineers to attempt to get to the bottom of the enigma. This was on the planet of Hermiston, which is where you come in.”

Harper smiled, reliving the memories. “That’s where I came across the ship just after...” He stopped, then went on, “At a time of my life when I couldn’t go on doing what I’d been doing. Commander Rodriguez trusted me, which was a mistake, and it wasn’t that difficult to take command of his ship while he was off-planet and escape to the Reach.”

“But, all the while, the Vetch wanted their property back. They sent agents out, under the guise of ambassadors and peace envoys, and attempted to track down the ship. Kreller was one of these ‘envoys’. He traced Commander Rodriguez and... shall we say,
persuaded
him to tell his side of the story. When Kreller discovered that you’d taken the ship and fled to the Reach, he pulled strings and had himself seconded to my brief – to find you and your ship.”

Harper considered Janaker and her story. “So... what is it you want me to find out from him?”

Janaker ran a big hand through a hank of jet black hair. “There’s an understanding between the Expansion authorities and the Vetch,” she said. “We’re to work together against the threat of the Weird, as it’s a threat to both our races. To this end the agreement was that the super-weapon, when it was discovered, would be brought from the Reach, investigated and developed – and mass produced – by both Vetch and human scientists.”

“Ah...” Harper said. “But you don’t trust Kreller as far as you could throw him?”

“That’s one way of saying it, yes. I fear that the Vetch, once they get their paws on the weapon, will decide to renege on the deal and take back what they see as rightfully theirs – which would have unfortunate consequences, of course, for Expansion security. Quite apart from undermining our efforts to defeat the Weird.”

“So you want me to get inside Kreller’s head, see just what it is the Vetch are planning?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“You do realise that he’ll be shielded, especially now that I’m around?”

“Of course. However...” She turned to the ship and pointed. “Look...”

Harper strained against the clamps. “It might help if you’d release me from this damned thing.”

She regarded him. “Very well, Harper. But remember, I’m armed.”

“I’d be a fool to try anything now, wouldn’t I?”

She paused in the process of deactivating the clamps. “So you agree to come back to Expansion space, of your own free will, and work with the authorities against the Weird?”

He’d gone over the pros and cons, while she’d been speaking, and realised that there was only one course of action a sane individual might take, given the circumstance. A part of him bridled at the very idea, even so. He nodded. “I agree.”

She released him and he stood slowly, rubbing his chafed wrists. He moved to the viewscreen and stared out.

Janaker indicated
Judi
and said. “See that, close to the dorsal fin?”

A golden glow emanated from the ship’s carapace, an effulgent nexus which, as he watched, expanded and gradually covered all of the ship’s stern.

“What is it?”

“Kreller calls it a command nexus. For want of a better word, it’s a living, externalised
brain
which, for the duration of flight, the pilot will be paired, or bonded, with.”

“I see. So for the period of the flight back to the Expansion, Kreller will be... incapacitated?”

She smiled. “When he’s in the command sling and bonded, I’ll be able to remove his shield and you can do your stuff. Only, there’s something you should know – Kreller’s plan isn’t to go directly back to Expansion territory.”

“Then where?”

She pivoted on her heel and pointed out across the lake, to the distant mountain range. “Now that Kreller has the weapon,” she said, “he wants to use it.”

Harper understood. “Against the lair of the vakan, the Weird?”

She inclined her head. “Against the Weird portal in the mountains, yes.”

Harper’s heart pounded. “And... I take it that the Weird won’t idly sit by and allow this attack?”

“That, Harper, remains to be seen. I don’t know what the defensive capabilities of the Weird here might be, but I think we’re soon going to find out.”

The golden nexus had steadily crept around
Judi
’s body now, engulfing her in its dazzling glow. From its former dull grey, excoriated condition, her carapace appeared pristine, lambent.

He said, “But my ship was damaged.”

Janaker smiled. “It was, until Kreller started work on it, with the aid of the nexus.”

Her wrist-com buzzed. She took the call, spoke briefly into her com, and nodded. She cut the connection and looked at Harper.

“That was Kreller. He’s ready to take off.”

Harper touched his jacket pocket, feeling for his ferronnière. It wasn’t there. Janaker smiled, reached into her jacket and pulled out the loop.

They left the ship and crossed the clearing towards his transformed ship. He thought of Zeela, imprisoned within the long-house with her fellow Kallastanians. He saw a dozen faces at the slit windows and the door, staring out.

They came to
Judi
and climbed into the hatch over the ragged metal. He was glad to see that the interior was as it always had been; the golden metamorphosis was only skin deep. He looked around at the familiar fixtures and fittings, as they made their way to the flight-deck, with the bitter knowledge that soon the ship would no longer be his.

Soon, he would be working for the Expansion, hard though that was to stomach.

Always assuming, of course, that he survived the imminent encounter with the Weird.

Experimentally, he raised his wrist-com to his lips and said, “
Judi
? Are you reading?”

Silence greeted the question. He wondered if
Judi
, as he had known her, was no more.

They came to the flight-deck to find the giant Kreller striding its length, as if impatient to be airborne. He looked from Harper to Janaker. “You brought him. Good. Be seated, human. I want you to witness the might and power of Vetchian technology.”

Harper smiled as he took a padded seat at the back of the flight-deck. “It will be a privilege, Kreller.”

The Vetch spoke in his own, guttural tongue – and
Judi
responded. The maindrive fired and, slowly, they rose into the air, turned forty-five degrees and moved out over the lake.

Only as they ascended towards the distant mountain range did the Vetch slip his bulk into the pilot’s sling.

It was a sling, Harper saw, much transformed. He made out extra leads and jacks, and an extension of the golden nexus that covered the outer layer of the ship had intruded and worked its way across the fabric of the sling.

Kreller had evidently not yet melded with the operating system. He turned to where Harper was seated and said, “Janaker has told you about the... transformation of your ship? The system is simple in concept, though complex in application. Put simply, the nexus with which the ship is coated is a conductor – though that does not adequately describe the function of the matrix. It connects the ship to the basal strata of the void on a quantum level, and thus facilitates the transmission of... energy. Think of it, simply, as a lightning conductor. Though the power we will conduct is of an order a million times more powerful than any explosion generated by human – or Vetchian – weapons.”

Harper nodded. “I’m impressed.”

The Vetch regarded him with huge, bloody eyes. “You will be when the Weird’s portal is annihilated, human.”

Janaker asked, “When are we due to reach the portal?”

The Vetch consulted his instrument panel. “Seven minutes and counting.”

Harper glanced across at the woman, who kept her gaze on the scene through the screen.

They had passed over the lake and were approaching the folded foothills. Ahead, the mountain range rose, grey and forbidding, its peaks covered with snow and streamers of cloud.

He recalled what Janaker had said about the resistance of the other Weird portals to regular marine bombardment. If they succeeded here, then there was hope that the spread of the alien menace might be curtailed.

All that would remain, then, was the small matter of tracking down and eradicating all those hapless individuals who were playing host to Weird mind-parasites.

Harper leaned close to Janaker and murmured, “I thought you said he’d be melding with the system?”

She nodded tightly. “He will, if he’s to direct the weapons.”

He sat back, sweating.

And if he did read in the Vetch’s mind that his race had no intentions of sharing their weapons with humanity? Then, presumably, somewhere on the flight back the alien would attempt to deviate off course, towards Vetch territory... and what plans might he have for the fate of the accompanying humans?

They were sailing close to a vast slab of rock that was the mountain’s northern face. It passed in monumental silence, the peak seeming to move slowly as if in a dream. Ahead, Harper made out the green upland valleys of the interior; they could only be a matter of three or four minutes from the portal.

Harper heard a long sigh and turned his attention to the Vetch.

The alien had sunk back into the sling, and from the headrest the dazzling golden nexus crept across the Vetch’s unkempt mane. Kreller made a sound more like a gasp and his body spasmed as if in ecstasy.

Janaker glanced at Harper. He nodded, apprehension clenching the muscles of his stomach.

She sprang from her seat, crossed the flight-deck in three strides, and slid a hand under the Vetch’s leather jerkin. Seconds later she held up a small silver oval device the size of a flattened egg. She retreated to her seat beside Harper, sweat coating her broad face.

In the sling, Kreller twitched as he melded with the ship.

With trembling fingers Harper reached into his jacket and withdrew his ferronnière. He looped it around his head, then paused and turned to Janaker. A thought occurred...

“What?” she asked, her eyes wide.

He smiled at her. “You must take me for a complete fool, Janaker.”

“Harper, what the hell...?”

“How do I know that you’re telling the truth, about any of this, the Weird, the ‘super-weapon’...?”

“Harper, I thought you’d agreed...” She glanced through the viewscreen, desperately. “Look, are you going to...?”

He said, “I want to read you. I’ll be quick, a matter of seconds. Remove your shield, and Kreller’s, and put them both out of range.”

“Harper!” Her eyes bored into him, hate filled.

“Do it.”

“Fuck you!” she spat, then stood abruptly, reached into her jerkin and pulled out her shield. She strode across the deck, placed her shield and the Vetch’s in a recess and returned, standing over him.

“Okay,” she said, “get this over with, Harper.”

He closed his eyes and scanned.

He skimmed through the fiery nova of Janaker’s mind, encountering fragments of thoughts, memories; he read her dislike of the Vetch, and her horror at what Commander Gorley had told her about the Weird. He saw the images of the Weird that Gorley had shown her before she set off on the mission: hideous bloated creatures similar to those he’d seen in the clearing, and stick-thin homunculi.

He read enough, in seconds, to know that everything she had told him about the threat of the Weird was true.

He opened his eyes, nodded, and Janaker strode to the recess and snatched up her shield. Instantly the flare of her mind abated.

He passed on, mentally approaching the alien territory of the Vetch’s mind with trepidation. He knew he would have to immerse himself in the maelstrom of Kreller’s mind more fully than he would in the mind of a human: in the latter, the territory was familiar, the landmarks, as it were, known to him from many past encounters. Now he was in an alien land, where the geography was inimical, threatening in its incomprehensible originality. There were, however, pointers he could grasp, signs that were common to all sentient organisms: the visual images that populated the Vetch’s sensorium. By latching onto these he could navigate his way through Kreller’s psyche, and even ascribe emotions to certain recalled images.