Alien Caller (57 page)

“Unfortunately
we’ve now lost the battle, he’s hit us with a damper field, which
has shut our drives down, and the only power we have left is
reserves, which won’t last more than a day or two at best, and now
he’s towing us at high gravities well off our original course.”
Being towed? Faster than the speed of light? David had never
considered the possibility, though he wasn’t surprised they’d lost.
Other than a meteor blasting laser beam, the ship was unarmed,
something else that had surprised him about their ship. Where were
the phasers? But why would their assailant tow them? If robbery was
the intent, surely he’d just board them and take whatever he
wanted. Not that there was anything to steal. And what other reason
could there be? There was of course no answer. The captain didn’t
know and their enemy hadn’t bothered to tell them.

“We’ve sent out
distress signals as best we can, but we think the other ship’s
blocking them somehow, and in any case the nearest military vessel
is surely many light years away. We can’t count on any help from
them.”

“But what’s
important now is that our long range sensors, those that are still
working, are telling us we’re heading for a system. An empty
system. And it’s clear that this is his destination from the fact
that we’re slowing down. Another four hours at our best guess, and
we’ll be in orbit around the second world. He has a much more
advanced drive than our own. At least twenty times as powerful.”
Was there some bitterness in the Captain’s translated voice? David
thought there might be. But more important than that was the fact
that the drive was more advanced. If the drive was more advanced,
then so too was the technology of the attacker. Which meant surely,
if he understood the political landscape of interstellar space at
all, the attacker was from one of the more advanced races, of which
there were only two. The Floyd and the Mentans.

David knew
nothing of either race, save for the fact that they were extremely
old, having been space faring for tens of thousands of years, and
that they were also peaceful. It was they that had first set up the
Interstellar Community Council, established the ground rules for
the exploration and exploitation of space, and then enforced it. So
why would either be attacking an unarmed Leinian transport? It made
no sense. Unless there was another race out there.

A hand suddenly
found his and he turned to see that Cyrea was still beside him, in
the same boat as him, literally. She too had no answers in her
eyes, and he knew she had to be frightened. Instead of asking the
questions he knew she couldn’t answer, he simply held her tight.
Not so easy when her belly was already starting to swell, but a
comfort none the less.

“It'll be all
right,” he told her. But they both knew he had no idea. None of
them did.

Chapter
Twenty Eight

The ship was
being boarded.

That was
something that David still found incredible. Impossible actually.
And worst of all, he like the other passengers had been ordered to
stay in the common area. He hated that. He should be out there with
the crew, repelling boarders. He was their best fighter in unarmed
combat, and they had no weapons. But the captain had been very
clear on that, and Cyrea more so. So he had to stand with her and
the others and wait for their pirates to show up. It wasn't
easy.

They all stood
around in the common room, staring at one another helplessly.
Waiting nervously. None of them had any idea of what to do. Neither
did he, and that was wrong. He always had a plan. His training
always gave him an option. But not this time.

The options
were always only three; run, hide or fight. But it was a small
ship, there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. He would be
caught either way, and he had Cyrea to protect. Which left only
fighting. But against who? And how many? And how well armed were
they? Despite all his training, all his years in the field, David
was as helpless as the rest and he hated it. Which left him with
only the fourth option, the one that no one ever spoke about. To
surrender.

“We’ve been
boarded.” The captain’s warning blared out through the room but
there was no need. They’d all heard the clangs and scrapes as the
hull was slowly being forced open. And they’d all heard the huge
cacophony as something large and metallic fell on to the metal
floor. The noise echoed through the ship. They all understood what
it meant. What they didn’t know was what came next.

They heard it
though. The tap, tap, tap of metal feet on the steel deck. The
whoosh of weapons fire, and the shouts of the crew as they had to
fall back. What else could they do? They were unarmed. This was a
transport vessel, not a warship. If the Leinians even had warships.
He’d never thought to ask.

Explosions
rocked the ship and people started screaming all around, some of
them men. He couldn’t blame them for that. They were civilians.
David was panicking as well, his mouth dry and his heart racing.
But then he was unarmed save for a pocket knife. And worse than
that he was in an unfamiliar environment and he had absolutely no
idea what he was facing. He would have screamed with them if not
for his training.

Then there was
smoke. The thick grey smoke was billowing everywhere. It came out
of the vents in the walls and rolled down the walls filling the
corridor just outside. Smoke on a spaceship didn’t strike him as
good, and immediately he saw it he had thoughts of suffocation.
After all it wasn’t as if they could run outside into the fresh
air.

“Oxygen masks!”
He made the call because it was the only thing he could think of
even though he had no idea if there were any. Did the spaceship
need such things? Would masks drop from the ceiling as they would
in a plane?

“It’s all
right.” Cyrea squeezed his hands and he was about to ask why. Did
she know something? But even as he opened his mouth he learned the
answer. He felt the jets of air suddenly blasting down on him from
above, and he saw the smoke being pushed out of the room.
Apparently the ship did have some safety measures after all.
Against smoke anyway. But then there was the sound of more shots
being fired, footsteps running and men yelling, and the tapping of
little metal feet, and he knew the ship had no defence against
that.

“We should take
cover.” He wasn’t sure if it would help them when they were unarmed
and things with steel feet were coming for them, but it was all he
had. There wasn’t even much to hide behind. The tables were
anchored to the floor and they wouldn’t provide much protection
anyway. The chairs were some sort of light weight composite. They
wouldn’t even make good clubs. In fact the only shield he could see
was the dart board and the only weapons the darts. Somehow he
doubted they’d be a lot of use. They didn’t even have a door to
close. The doorways didn’t come with them. The others stared at
him, perhaps hearing something hopeful, and then they looked around
the room hunting for shelter. Then they looked back at him, hope
gone as quickly as it had come.

There was
nothing he could tell them. Nothing they could do except wait for
whatever came through the doorway.

So they waited,
listening to the sounds of the battle as they came closer, and
tried to stay calm. For his part David said nothing. There was
nothing to say. He just held Cyrea and prayed. Prayed that there
might come an opportunity to take down their attackers. All he
needed was a chance.

The chance
didn’t come. Instead there were more explosions and more smoke.
More screams and more metal feet tapping out their terrifying
rhythm on the metal floor. Soon even the fresh air being pumped
into the room couldn’t stop the smoke. It was billowing down the
hallways, thick and nasty, and despite everything, it was slowly
forcing its way into the common room instead of out. Instinctively
they all backed away from it, heading for the far walls.

Then the first
of the steel creatures entered the room, and David nearly had a
heart attack. Instinctively he pushed Cyrea behind him, protecting
her with the only thing he had; his body. But all the time he had
eyes only for their attacker. It was a spider. A mechanical spider.
And every instinct he had, every thought in his head was telling
him to run screaming. He hated spiders. It might have had six steel
legs instead of eight, no head, and be the size of a dog, but it
still looked like a spider to him. But what it looked like was less
important than what it was carrying. Some sort of weapon on an
articulated arm standing up from the middle of its back. That was
the true danger.

Of course it
wasn’t alone, and as they stood there more and more of them entered
the room, emerging through the smoke and taking up positions on
either side of the doorway. Soon there were a dozen of them at
least, all with their weapons pointed at them, and David knew the
battle was over. But at least they weren't shooting. He just hoped
that too many of the crew hadn’t been hurt, or worse.

Some had been
though. He watched as he saw the captain, blood on his forehead,
get literally thrown into the room along with a few other of his
crew, only to come crashing down on the floor in front of them. The
robots weren’t gentle about things. But at least the crew were
alive. They were even able to get to their feet and stand with them
as they waited. Some of them anyway.

Then through
the clouds of smoke a faint shape appeared, and David realised
their pirate had finally arrived. He almost wished he hadn’t. He,
it(?), was alien as he’d expected. But that word explained almost
nothing about it. It was different in ways he could never have
imagined. It had too many legs, none of them moving in the same
direction. It looked most like a huge round coffee table with
curved sides and dozens of legs. It was also big and grey, and as
far as he could tell, had no head let alone eyes or a face.

Things got
worse as the creature came closer through the clearing smoke and he
thought he was seeing things. He wanted to be seeing things as
David realized at one point that it didn’t actually have any legs
after all. Instead it had tentacles, thick grey tentacles with no
joints that writhed and wriggled in a distressing harmony. They
began at the creature’s flat body, where they were as thick as a
man’s thigh but quickly tapered to a point which curled up on the
floor like the toes of pixie shoes. Every one of them moved
independently, constantly sending David's fears into overdrive. And
it did have eyes, maybe. At least he thought it did. They were on
the underside of its body, peering out from between the cage
comprised of its legs. Little black marbles that surrounded its
torso.

But the worst
of it was that he knew that the creature was intelligent. It was in
the holsters strapped to each of its tentacles, each of which
carried a number of devices. Some of them he knew were weapons.
Probably the ones it held in its front tentacles.

“A Mentan!”
Whatever else it was, Cyrea clearly knew the species, and from her
tone she was truly shocked. And even if he didn’t recognise the
creature, he knew the name. Mentans. One of the two races that had
formed the Interstellar Community. That meant he realised that it
was one of the two oldest and most advanced species of the sector.
It was a powerful enemy, though it shouldn’t have been one at all.
Mentans were supposedly peaceful. In fact they were one of the two
races that had created the Interstellar Community Council from what
he had been told. But before he could think of anything to say, the
captain did.

“Why have you
attacked our ship, Mentan? Dragged us off course and sabotaged our
communications? We are not enemies, and this is not a war ship.
This is a transport and we’re carrying these two to a hospital for
care. If we don’t get there it could be serious.” Quietly David
thought Gal was over-stating the case a little bit, or at least he
hoped he was. Many women had had babies before, even if they
weren’t aliens and all the doctors had continually said everything
looked fine.

“Believe me
friend Leinian. I wish I had a choice, but I don’t.” The voice was
flat and toneless and came from somewhere above the creature’s
missing head. Some sort of translator and communication device he
guessed. Certainly there was no mouth with moving lips to make the
sound. Not that he could see.

“I cannot allow
you to complete your trip. It would be the ultimate humiliation for
my people, though they don’t even know it yet. But neither will I
let you be harmed. My people are not savages.” Which funnily enough
was exactly what David thought he was. Or actually a pirate. He
wanted to say something, he ached to point out exactly what he had
done and what he was, but instead he kept his mouth shut.
Antagonism wouldn’t help, and he had Cyrea to think of. The last
thing he could afford was a gun battle.

“You have been
brought to a new world, where I’ve set up food and supplies below
for all of you. Enough to last you for your entire lives. But never
will you be allowed to leave that world, nor to communicate off it.
For now it must be as though you never really existed.” The worst
of it all was that David and the others all knew they had no real
option. They never had. The creature had total control of the ship,
and by the looks of things was only too well armed. So much for
peaceful transports. Next time David decided he was taking a
battleship.