Pelquin's Comet (38 page)

“Yeah, lucky us,” she replied, but it was said without any hint of malice. Previous petty differences seemed irrelevant after all that had happened.

Darkness was falling by the time they’d finished. Pelquin took the
Comet
up and parked her in orbit. None of them wanted to spend a night close to the cache chamber or the Xter ship.

The next morning the
Comet
returned to the planet’s surface. Spirits aboard had revived a little, but the atmosphere remained muted.

Drake, Bren, Nate and Leesa took the buggy across to the Xter ship. Drake was quietly pleased to note the subtle change in Leesa’s status. Any reservations Pelquin or anyone else might have had about her had clearly evaporated, and she was now working as a fully integrated part of the team.

“Pel… You should see this,” Bren said over the com as they stepped aboard the alien vessel.

“Yeah, and one day I will,” came the reply. “But not today.” He and the doc were busy compiling an inventory of what they’d brought out from the cache.

Drake knew that images were being relayed back to the
Comet
via their suits, but Bren was evidently determined to add a personal commentary. “This is… weird; absolutely amazing.”

“Almost alien, you mean?” Pelquin said.

“Very funny. There’s no ‘almost’ about it, trust me.”

Drake knew what she meant. You might suppose that an empty hold was just a big open space; pretty much the same no matter who had built it, but that failed to take into account what surrounded the space. Considered separately, each individual element might be familiar and logical, but the proportions were all wrong: designed for beings with different frames and a different number of limbs. In combination, the effect was reality-stretching and surreal. Drake had actually been on an Xter ship before, though he had no intention of admitting the fact, but never in its hold. He had to admit that there was something deeply unsettling about it.

“Come on, we’ve got a job to do,” Nate muttered – evidently unfazed.

They found the control room easily enough – a space far more deserving of the term ‘bridge’ than anywhere aboard the
Comet
– and while Nate and Bren went to deploy the Ptarmigan, Leesa set about trying to fathom the controls. Drake stayed with her to ‘observe’, interjecting when needed. Between Leesa and Mudball – ostensibly Leesa and Drake – they managed to work out the basics.

I could fly this thing all the way home if you like,
Mudball told him.
The systems are far more logical than anything you humans have come up with.

And that would be far more difficult to explain than programming the ship for a simple planetary orbit,
Drake pointed out.

They rendezvoused with the others back at the buggy. Both Nate and Bren were carrying a spacesuit each and an armful of other assorted Xter items. Bren grinned, “Waste not, want not.”

Nobody wanted to hang around planetside any longer than necessary, and the
Comet
lifted as soon as possible once they were back on board.

“The moment of truth,” Pelquin said, triggering the sequence that should see the Xter ship follow them into the air. Things went without a hitch, and the
Comet
then shadowed the other craft as they headed for the edge of atmosphere.

“You’re sure it’s stable?” Pelquin asked, as Bren checked the Xter’s orbit for the umpteenth time. She was standing in for Nate, who had cried off bridge duties, still recovering from the injuries he had sustained in the cache chamber.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, here goes.” Pelquin triggered the Ptarmigan, and the Xter ship immediately vanished from their sensors. He waited a few seconds and then turned it off. The ship reappeared.

“Exactly where she should be,” Bren said. “Don’t worry, we can find her again.”

For future retrieval and salvage.

The enormity of what they’d achieved had begun to sink in at last, and a cautious sense of celebration overtook the crew, though news that Nate Almont was unwell soon put a dampener on things again. The cause of his tiredness proved to be more than just his injuries.

“He’s picked up an infection,” Doc explained. “I told him he should have worn a slap mask, but would he listen? No, of course he wouldn’t.”

“How come Pel and I haven’t got it?” Bren asked. “We both lost our masks in the chamber.”

“Blind luck,” the doc told her. “As with any bug, exposure doesn’t guarantee infection it merely provides an opportunity and increases the likelihood.”

“Can you cure him?” Pelquin wanted to know.

The doc shook his head. “Not with the facilities we’ve got here. This is an alien virus. I might be able to slow it down, but cure it…? No.”

“Will it kill him?”

The doc shrugged. “Who knows? I can’t even say for certain whether it’s infectious or not. The ship isn’t exactly equipped for isolation and we’ve all been breathing the same air since we came back on board in any case. There’s every chance that more of us are going to catch whatever this is.”

“Fantastic. Your advice?”

“A hospital, as soon as possible; preferably one capable of dealing with exotic diseases. I’ve taken the liberty of checking the data base and there’s one on a world not far from here, just into human space.”

Drake was impressed, not to mention a little surprised by the doc’s initiative. Clearly the threat was serious enough to stir him into action.

“We don’t really have much choice, do we?” Pelquin said. “Okay, Doc, give me the coordinates.”

They delayed only briefly. In a ceremony that harked back to the days of seafaring and burials at sea, they committed Anna’s body to space, on a trajectory that would take her into this system’s sun.

The journey to the doc’s hospital world passed without incident. On approach, they were directed to an isolated landing area and instructed to wait there with the ship sealed until they were contacted again.

Drake sat in the galley. Bren, Doc and Nate were with him. The latter looked far from healthy – his skin pasty and sweaty. Not the most pleasant of sights, but Bren’s suggestion that Nate might like to wait in his own bed hadn’t gone down too well.

“Yeah, and then again I might not,” the big man had said. “Look, if you’re going to catch it you’ve probably already got it by now. No point in making me a pariah at this stage.”

The doc had dosed them all with a cocktail of drugs which he hoped might offer some protection from the virus. For all Drake knew, this might have been no more than a placebo, but at least it offered reassurance that something was being done.

In the meantime, they waited.

Drake yawned, feeling unaccountably tired; his limbs were suddenly heavy and he was struggling to keep his eyes open. A delayed reaction to all the excitement? It wasn’t like him to crash so completely, no matter how fraught recent events might have been. Then he noticed Bren slump forward, her head cradled in her arms, already asleep; Leesa was nodding off too.

Mudball?

I’m checking… Yeah, you’ve been drugged; poisoned. Sorry.

Mudball had no access to his body, only his mind. There was nothing the little alien could do to affect his metabolism. Nate Almont finally making his move, it had to be; and a pretty successful one too by the look of things. Fake an illness and bring them all exactly where he wanted them… Then he saw Almont try to stand, only for his legs to buckle, causing him to collapse onto the floor; clearly as much a victim as anyone else. If not Almont,
who
?

By now Drake was struggling to keep his head upright and his eyes open. A contest he was losing. His head felt so heavy it was a wonder his slender neck ever managed to support it. With that thought his chin dropped onto his chest.

As consciousness fled, Drake caught movement in the corner of his eye and strained to stay awake for just a fraction longer, managing to do so long enough to see Dr Ahmed Bariha step forward to examine Bren, as if to check that she really was unconscious. Only then, in the last seconds before awareness deserted him, did Drake finally understand.
The doctor, of course…

De Souza, Archer, Gant, and two additional heavies – big, solid, thick-set goons hired by Gant to provide extra muscle – rushed towards the waiting ship in a covered truck. Bariha had signalled that he’d taken control of the
Comet
and, true to his word, the loading bay door was unfolding even as they approached. By the time they arrived it was fully opened and they were able to drive straight up its ramp and into the ship. De Souza still had a lingering concern that this might all be some ruse and he was about to be greeted by Pelquin and the rest of the
Comet
’s crew bearing big grins and even bigger guns, but it didn’t happen. As Gant brought the truck screeching to a halt, the Jossyren executive opened the door and stepped out unopposed. Behind him, Archer and the hired muscle unfolded themselves from the more cramped seating at the back.

A wall of Elder artefacts faced him. More wealth than most men, most
hundred
men combined, would ever encounter in their lifetimes; and it was all
his
. Well, mostly his.

De Souza took a moment to stand and savour the heady flush of victory.

Footsteps heralded the arrival of someone on the metal stairway leading to the ship’s upper decks: Bariha. The doctor looked nervous, as if anxious to get all this unpleasantness over with.

“The crew are up here,” he said.

De Souza nodded and went to follow him, pausing as Archer said, “I’ll stay here and start loading the artefacts. I know how much would be expected from a minor cache find and I’ll put some pieces aside to cover that; enough to persuade First Solar that my own supposed cache hunt was a genuine one.”

“Fine, fine. Gant can help you.”

Archer looked at him sharply for an instant, as if the idea that de Souza might not fully trust him had never occurred to the idiot before; but he didn’t object. De Souza felt a lot more comfortable knowing that the banker and all that wealth were under Gant’s watchful gaze.

He followed the doctor up the stairs, the two goons close behind. It never ceased to amaze him how basic these small trading ships were. This stairway, the gantry it led to – the entire living quarters section of the ship – felt impermanent and flimsy, as if the whole lot had been hastily erected to serve the crew for this one trip alone and would be dismantled and packed away immediately afterwards. It was all so claustrophobic. Not even the lowliest miners who worked for Jossyren were expected to spend any length of time in such cramped conditions. And yet people lived like this by choice. It bordered on the barbaric.

Even the galley, which was intended to service the entire crew and act as a social centre for the duration of the trip, was smaller than a single room in the suite he enjoyed aboard his own ship. The low ceiling didn’t help; nor did the fact that the room was currently littered with recumbent forms. The scene was almost peaceful. There was no sign of violence or anything nefarious, they all looked comfortably asleep. All it needed was a little contented snoring and the picture would have been complete.

“Are they dead yet?” he asked the doctor.

“No, probably not,” Bariha replied. “Soon, though. I made it painless. After all, these were my friends.”

De Souza couldn’t have cared less, and certainly didn’t intend saying anything to help salve the man’s conscience. These were people Bariha had crewed with,
lived
with, yet he’d turned on them and murdered them rather than come clean and seek their help and understanding. He’d chosen to be exploited rather than exposed. Whining about it after the event was pointless.

A small form moved, startling de Souza. At first he was afraid it might be a rat, but then he discerned a ball of green-brown fur from which two saucer-like eyes stared at him. The thing rested by the shoulder of a man in a grey suit, whom de Souza recognised from the reception on Brannan’s as the banking representative, Drake. What was it with bankers and suits?

“What the hell is
that
?” he said out loud.

“Just the banker’s genpet,” Bariha replied. “It’s harmless.”

Reassured, de Souza shifted his focus, taking particular pleasure in seeing Nate Almont among the doctor’s victims. Here was a man who had spurned the chance to work with him and instead had run back to his old friend Pelquin and offered
him
the golden opportunity.
Not such a bright move after all, eh?
Almont deserved all that he got and more.

De Souza abruptly realised that something wasn’t right. He did a quick head count. “There’s one missing. Where’s the captain, Pelquin?”

“In the ship’s cockpit collapsed over the controls,” Bariha assured him. “Don’t worry; he’s unconscious the same as his crew.”

De Souza allowed himself to relax. “Good. How long before…”

It was at this point that one of them moved. Not a genpet this time, or even a rat; a woman, and not someone he could identify. Hard-bodied, still young though not a kid; a moment before, she had been slumped forward over the table, apparently as unconscious as the rest. Not anymore.

There was nothing woolly-headed about the way she moved, no indication that she was just waking up or fighting off the effects of a deadly toxin, far from it. Her actions were swift, assured, and effective, taking everyone by surprise.

Leesa recognised the presence of the poison as soon as it began to affect her body, paralysing nerves and attempting to shut down sections of her brain. The augmented part of her mind analysed the active agent and began to manufacture countermeasures immediately, ruthlessly drawing on her own body for what was required – plundering the components of blood, nerves, tissues – and even utilising elements of the toxin itself. The effects of the poison were neutralised almost before they’d begun to take hold. While everyone else was slumping into unconsciousness around her, Leesa felt bright as a button and pumped with adrenaline; but she determined to play dead, to mimic the other victims and see what developed.