Debatable Space (2 page)

I see a sparkle on Alliea’s back, I spray her with a ray of blinding light that scalds her armour and burns off the nanowarrior.
I raise my gun again – pish pish pish – two sparkles fade to nothing, and a huge hole appears in the bulkhead.

We charge on through, spraying dust, shooting micro-enemies. We are intense, forbidding, absurd, like a SWAT team of delusional
schizophrenics shooting at imaginary flies.

The ship has one passenger, it is the woman we have sought for so long. We burst onto the bridge and confront her. She is
lithe, beautiful, raven-haired, angry. She glares and fires a plasma gun at us, but we dodge. Harry fires a pulse burst that
shreds her gun. We entangle her in sticky-bonds, as her screams echo through the ship… She is free of sparkles, they
are programmed to avoid her.

But then Rob gulps, and starts to tremble.

He looks at me with fear in his eyes. A nanowarrior has got through his facial force field. He pats his cheek. It must have
burrowed through. It’ll be in the brain in a second or so, snipping and jabbing and tearing. Within sixty seconds, every internal
organ will be in shreds.

Rob has been my friend for thirty years now. I am also his Captain, his protector, his colleague. I feel a pang of loss.

I raise my gun and blow his head off. Blood and brains spray everywhere. The others fire their weapons, incinerating and disintegrating
so that not a corpuscle touches the ground.

All that remains is a particle of sparkle, hovering in the air, miraculously unscathed.

Five pulse guns fire as one. The sparkle dies.

I mourn.

I move on.

For twelve hours we hunt the ship, in search of deadly sparkles. By the end, I am bone weary, and I feel the shit backed up
in my colon.

“All clear.”

I am asleep on my feet. I stumble. Alliea props me up.

She falls asleep too. We support each other, swaying, sleeping, blinking into wakefulness.

And we hug, and we cry. Rob was her husband, she loved him more than anything.

“My darling, my precious, don’t do this, don’t leave me,” Alliea weeps.

I bawl like a baby, and hold her close.

“Welcome.”

I fix him with a cold, forbidding stare.

His name is Captain Flanagan. "Captain" is a courtesy title, he has no pilot’s training or licence. He’s a fifth-generation
settler from the planet Cambria, ninety-seven years of age.

He looks much older. The hair, the wrinkles…

It’s his choice. His eyes and organs are new, but the hair is untreated, it does naturally go that grey colour you know.

I know! Do you think I’m stupid? I know!

“Let me introduce you to my crew,” says Captain Flanagan.

I scream. The bridge is on fire! I step back…

I’m amplifying your force field.

Stop this!

But there’s no need to be afraid. It’s a flame beast, from the solar system C40333. It’s sentient.

“This is Alby.”

“Pleasssed to meet you.”

A pillar of flame stands before me, shimmering, crackling,
speaking.
It’s alive.

“Hello Alby,” I say. I hold out my hand, imperiously. The flames whorl and a tendril of fire extends towards me. I feel the
heat of the fire through my exoarmour. I am unflapped.

“Brandon.”

Brandon Bisby, forty-five years of age, astrophysicist by training, his parents were killed by the Cheo’s shock troops, on
suspicion of being Terrorist. They were later exonerated.

He is lean, skinny really, he is smiling at me, my God, his eyes are flickering up and down, inspecting my breasts, my thighs,
he wants sex with me. I shake his hand, then grip it painfully tight, and flick my other hand on his groin, and freeze him
with a look. He’s caught out in guilt and shame.

The Captain smiles. He’s amused by my powerplay.

“Alliea.”

She’s an escaped slave, from penal settlement XIY. Her parents were career criminals, she was born in prison and fled after
a power failure in '82.

She’s strong, her shockingly purple exoarmour sculpted around sharply defined muscles. She doesn’t have the defeated and haunted
look I would have expected of a slave. She’s scowling at me, she hates me. I smile a kindly smile at her, offering her my
grace and benediction, ironically of course. She is, I concede, beautiful, a fine example of femslave.

“Harry.”

He’s a Loper, bioengineered at the Stanstead Laboratories on the planet Shame.

He is half man, half beast, with rich silver fur and sharp pointy teeth. He has three eyes which are bright green. He wears
no clothing, I wonder idly about his genitalia.

Eleven inches, retractable, here’s an image of the Loper erect.

I burst out laughing, no one knows why.

“And Jamie.”

Jamie is a child, ten at most. He baffles me.

Arrested development. He’s 120 years old, a computer gamesplayer, he paid a lab to keep him in a prepubertal state a few weeks
before his tenth birthday. His parents didn’t know until afterwards. The procedure is irreversible.

“Cool, baby.”

He touches my breast with his finger and thumb, feeling the warmth of the smooth but impermeable exoarmour which, in this
light, shimmers with a rainbow of subliminal images.

“Jamie!” reproves the Captain.

“You will, of course, all die,” I say calmly.

“We all die, sooner or later,” says Captain Flanagan. I fix him with another condescending stare.

“What ransom do you require?” I ask him.

“Your people will be informed, in due course. In the meantime, you will be kept under house arrest. All my people are armed
with paralysing sprays, any insubordination and you will be kept in semi-coma. However, provided you can live according to
the ship’s rules, you will be accorded full privileges as a prisoner of war and will be treated with courtesy, respect and
dignity. We are signatories of the Post Geneva Convention, you can be assured of our professionalism and good intentions.”

“You are the shit I excrete from my arsehole,” I point out to him. “Your mothers were whores who fellated animals for money.
I recoil at your presence, I have no doubt that you eat your young, alive and screaming.”

“I, ah…” The Captain blinks, a little taken aback at the vehemence of my verbal assault.

“And you’re a bitch,” says the woman, Alliea. “And your father is scum. An evil bastard fucking dictator who has crushed the
life out of humanity!”

“Easy, Alliea,” says the Captain mildly.

I am shaken, but do not show it.

“You are sworn enemies of the Cheo?” I say to them. “You want to
defy
him?”

“We want to, uh, take lots of money off him and then run off giggling,” says the child, Jamie. And then he grins.

Don’t lose your temper.

“I demand to be released.”

And don’t provoke them. Let the Cheo pay the ransom, it’s only money.

“The Cheo will never negotiate with terrorists.”

“Your father is a rich man. He can afford it.”

“Surrender, or you will feel his wrath,” I tell them.

They start to laugh at me. “Surrender or you will feel his wrath!” mimics the child, in a booming B-movie voice, hopping up
and down. Flanagan, too, has to cover his face with one hand to hold his laughter in.

“I will not be treated like this.”

Flanagan tries to resume his previous severe look. “You’re our prisoner now,” Flanagan says, “you’ll do as we damn well .
. .”

I strike Flanagan in the face. He has no expectation of the blow. His skull shatters and blood flies from his nose. I whirl
like the wind, claws extending from my exohands, and I slash the hamstrings of the Loper, back-kick the woman and . . .

I blame you. You gave me poor advice.

Not so, Lena. I specifically told you not to lose your temper.

But you might have guessed I’d ignore you.

(Sigh.)

How was I to know they’d be so good at fighting?

These people are pirates Lena. They are deadly and seasoned warriors. You cannot defeat them with your dojo training.

My pain is infinite, my predicament painful and harrowing. This is torment, this is hell, this is hopelessly humiliating.

Lena, console yourself with…

Shut up! I am in semi-coma. I can move, I can talk, I can breathe, I can eat. But…

But I feel as if I’m trapped under a massive gravitational field. Every movement is slow,
so
slow, slo-mo with heartburn, and each breath is an achingly prolonged rasp and wheeze.

And, I, am, ob-lig-ed, to, speak, a, syll, a, ble, at, a, time.

It, is, un, en, dur, a, ble.

Wow! She’s hot.

What a babe! A beaut.

I wonder if she fancies me?

Maybe I’m too young for her.

Or at least, I look too young. Maybe ten was a mistake. If I was eleven, or twelve, maybe I could still be a player. But women
hate it when your balls haven’t dropped and you don’t need to shave. How picky is that!!!!!!

I watch her on the hidden camera, as she shuffles from wall to wall. Her face is a frozen mask. That semi-coma must hurt like
hell. I wish she could see me. Come on, look at me! Here I am! Jamie! The cute one!

Even semi-paralysed, she still does it for me. Hornnyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

I assume the Captain’s planning to kill her.

Pity.

Maybe I should call in and see her? Win her over with my banter and my rare ability to fart rhythmically?

But maybe not. She might think I’m immature. She might not like it when I pick my nose and slurp the green bogies.

But on the other hand… maybe I’m just too good for her.

I prefer that. I’m too good for her!

Nyaaahhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“I… have… a… complaint,” she says.

“Take it up with the Captain,” I tell her.

“I… can’t… .… .… .… .… .… .… .… .… . . . … .… .… . . . .
… .… . .”

I die of boredom waiting for her to finish her sentence.

“.… .… .… .… .… . eat.”

“I’ll inject you.”

I take out a compressed-air syringe. Connect it up to a food vial. She is looking at me with weary eyes.

“B… .… . . r… .… . . a… .… . . a.”

“Brandon,” I say, ending her interminable attempt at speaking my name.

She looks at me. Her eyes are pools of sorrow. She radiates vulnerability, passion, grace, beauty, she is a woman a man could
happily die for.

“You made your bed, lie in it,” I tell her curtly. I inject the food.

Her look curdles into one of pure hate. Speaking is too tiring for her, so she just uses the resources of her penetrating
stare.

“M… y… .… . . f… .… . . a… .… . . th…”

“I don’t want to hear about your father.”

I leave.

Behind me, I hear a stifled, semi-comatose sob. I feel a pang of pity for her.

My dream was to be a musician. I studied Spanish guitar, electric guitar, jazz guitar, fusion-techno guitar, keyboards, composition.
After I escaped from my home planet of Cambria, and I’d got my head free of all the shit that happened there, I spent twenty
years working on my music. I composed, I played, I mastered new instruments, I worked seven days a week, getting ready for
my launch on galactic television. I lived and breathed music.

Blues, boogie-woogie, reggae, hip-hop, techno, garage, Cuban fusion, bluegrass, flamenco soul and electro-soul, numusic, Jig
Jag, gospel – I was the acknowledged master of all the revered historical musical styles. Modern styles held little appeal
for me, I was the king of retro. But I was filled with an exhilarating sense that, by some magical process, I was creating
my own musical synthesis. I was combining style with content, soul and rhythmic energy, and I wrote lyrics that cut and shredded
the listener with their passion and which oozed and dripped and slimed sarcasm and attitude. My combo was called Flanagan’s
Band, and we were going places.

Then my wife and children were wiped out by an asteroid strike.

We were living at the time on the planet Pixar, one of the “Free Worlds”. It was a warm, pleasant planet with gorgeous lakes
and no seas. Pixar had two moons, and was subject to terrific tidal forces that caused regular flooding. But we all lived
in houses that converted easily from outdoor to underwater living. And there was something about the air… it was oxygen-rich,
low in impurities, and the act of breathing it in made you feel
good
.

Then the asteroid hit us. It was an astonishing, epic catastrophe, which for the inhabitants of Pixar was totally unexpected
and beyond our wildest imaginings. It led to the extinction of millions of species and the end of civilisation on the planet.
The atmosphere leached temporarily into space, volcanos erupted, entire continents ripped into segments, and the resulting
earthquakes spewed up the planetary depths on to the surface.

I was off-planet at the time, doing a gig on a space station in orbit around Pixar’s sun. But my wife Janet, and my son Adam,
and my daughters Claire and Adelaide were all on the planet. They were, I guess, obliterated within the first ten minutes.
I can only hope they didn’t know what was happening to them.

And when I heard the news, I literally couldn’t believe it. I became almost psychotic in my scepticism, convinced the Universe
was playing a practical joke on me. Then I replayed the vid footage and I wept. An entire world died… and all of my family
died with them!

After this appalling catastrophe, there was mourning throughout the inhabited universe. Emails of condolence came from the
remotest planets in the human domain, and the Government of Earth declared a day of mourning, in respect and homage to the
dear departed.

Then the conspiracy theorists started up. They whined and whinged and sent hysterical and fantastical texts and emails across
the galaxy, in their usual (hysterical, fantastical!) fashion. According to these nutsos, the asteroid strike had been predicted
decades before. But the Galactic Corporation decided to
let it happen
in order to give Pixar a more interesting and mountainous geography.