Space Captain Smith (3 page)

‘Can we get a closer image on the screen?’

‘Certainly.’ She reached to the seat pocket and came up with something black in her hand. ‘Here. Binoculars.’

Smith stood up, pressed the binoculars to his eyes and turned the dial. ‘Hard to see. It’s all quite dark…

Ah! I’ve got him. It looks like a great big sock with an engine at one end… and teeth at the other. It’s a void shark.’

‘Void sharks?’ Carveth was on the controls in a second.

‘I’ll put out flares.’

‘Is this a serious problem?’ Suruk asked. She glanced at him. ‘Not unless you mind walking. They’re interstellar animals. They feed on the metal in asteroids.’

‘But we’re not an asteroid,’ Smith said.

‘Not wishing to rob you of your Nobel Prize, Captain, but we are actually made of metal.’

‘Ah. Right. Good thinking, crew. How long till they arrive?’

‘Till they reach us? Two minutes, maybe.’

‘Righto. This is war then, men. Carveth, hold our course and be prepared to move fast.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘How long till they close?’

‘Minute thirty.’

‘Ready the weapons system!’

‘I can’t reach. You’re nearer, and you’ve got the key.’

‘Key?’

She pointed across the cockpit. Smith followed her finger to a large locker standing against the opposite wall.

‘What’s that?’

‘The weapons system.’

He stood up slowly, as if in a dream. ‘You have got to be kidding.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s it. This isn’t a dreadnought, you know.’

‘I have noticed.’ Smith took out the key and opened the locker. Inside there was a short-barrelled shotgun, a machine gun, a sword and some sort of service revolver.

‘This is it?’

‘Thirty-six seconds, Captain! Unless you want them chewing through the hull, someone’s going to have to go up top.’

‘I’m a space captain, not a bloody roof-rack! Absolutely not!’

‘Then we’re walking home.’

‘Don’t we have anything that doesn’t involve me getting on the roof?’ He glanced at his companions and saw fear in one face, and an equally worrying enthusiasm on the other. Right!’ Smith cried, exasperated. ‘Suruk, fetch a spacesuit. Carveth, keep going. Try to delay contact until I can get out the hatch.’ He reached into the locker and dragged out the machine gun. ‘I’m going outside. I may be some time.’

In the armoured spacesuit Isambard Smith looked like a cross between a deep-sea diver and a medieval knight, with cricket pads. Suruk held the helmet while Smith clamped the gun harness to his side.

It was a big gun, a Maxim Cannon, designed to support infantry against aliens and light vehicles. Smith pushed a drum of ammunition into the side of the gun and watched the round counter spin up to 999. Suruk held out the helmet and Smith put it on and closed the seals. There was a ladder leading up to the walkway that ran around the top of the hold, from which he could reach the airlock. Suruk closed the door behind him and Smith began to climb. He reached the top, sweating already, and pulled the lever. The hatch opened.

No weapons and full of rust, with a difficult robot for a pilot and a bunch of unfeasible sock-monsters trying to chew through the hull. And they had been in space less than three hours. Things were falling apart rapidly: at this rate, by day four he would have eaten Carveth and be dancing round a graven image of the sun. As he climbed out of the hatch and onto the roof Smith tried to look on the bright side, and then tried to work out if there actually was a bright side. Yes: had he not had his handlebar moustache trimmed recently he would not have been able to fit his head into the space helmet at all. Not much, but something.

His boots locked onto the metal hull. He stood there, on the back of the ship, staring at the blackness around him, the tiny stars millions of miles away. Space had a kind of cruel, vacant beauty, a beauty that completely ignored mankind. Space would neither know nor care if he died out here. He could float for thousands of years, a skeleton in a suit, and never be found again, forever drifting in the silent gulf between the stars. That would be really crap. He pulled the gun down, ready.

‘Are you out there?’ Carveth called over the intercom.

‘Yes, I’m here.’ He kicked the hatch shut with a slow, heavy punt.

‘Any sign?’

‘I can’t see anything. What does the lidar say?’

‘Lidar says there’s three of them, circling you. Should be visible soon.’

A lump of fear sat in his stomach like a rock. It had to be you or nobody, he told himself. Carveth was both the pilot, which meant that she was needed to steer the ship, and a woman, which meant that Smith had to protect her. Suruk wouldn’t know how to use a gun, and would achieve nothing with a spear. Being afraid made no difference: Smith had to do this, because he was the only one who could.

He began to run down the length of the ship in great lazy bounds. Smith reached to his side and tugged the umbilical line from his backpack. He landed, pressed it to the hull and switched on the magnetic link.

‘Smith?’

‘Pilot.’

‘I’ve got one coming in. Where are you?’

‘On top of the ship, above the kitchen. Where’s it coming from?’

‘Can you see it?’

He looked around: his helmet restricted the edge of his vision, forcing him to turn on the spot to see. ‘There’s nothing here.’

‘He’s very near. I can’t get a z-axis figure. I’m just comparing the lidar overlap. Hold on, it’s coming through . . .’

Smith glanced around nervously. The damned helmet cut a third out of his view.

‘Smith! Above you, now!’

His hands were faster than his neck: he jammed the gun upwards and let rip. The Maxim cannon bucked in his hands and Smith looked up to see a sky full of teeth. He saw the bullets hit the thing, tearing holes in its maw, and the void shark pulled away as gracefully as oil running through water, its long body slipping away from him and over the back of the ship. A cloud of purple dust streamed from a dozen points in the monster’s side – its blood.

‘Smith!’

‘Got the bugger!’ he cried. ‘How many more?’

‘Two. One’s close, Smith.’

‘How close?’

‘I can’t tell. It’s following the side of the ship—’

Something moved at the edge of his vision. He leaped aside and the second void shark rushed past like a colossal eel, teeth champing on the vacuum where he would have been. Smith soared away from the hull, seeing the shark slide beneath him too fast for him to aim. The umbilical snapped taut, and he floated back towards the hull, boots stuck out ready to clamp down again. The void shark’s tail flared and it slipped away from the ship. Smith opened fire. Violet bursts erupted down its flank and it whirled away from them, badly hurt.

‘I got him,’ Smith said. ‘Where’s the third?’

Something wriggled on the ship’s flank. ‘I see him,’ said Smith.

He bounded to the edge of the ship. The last void shark was clamped to the side of the
John Pym
like a lamprey, trying to chew its way through the hull. Smith stood over it and lined the gun up with the point where its brain ought to be.

He fired. For three seconds he held the trigger down. Smith lifted the gun away and, motionless, the void shark drifted away from the hull.

He watched it go. ‘Any more?’ he asked.

‘None. All signals moving away. What’s the damage like out there?’

He checked. Where the void shark had been feeding, it looked as if a rock drill had been pressed lightly against the ship. Great scratches in the metal showed where its teeth had been. None had broken through: there were several inches of protection still left. 

‘It’s not too bad,’ he said. ‘I can get a video camera out here if needs be.’

‘No,’ said Carveth, ‘if you think it can hold we’ll leave it until we get to New Fran. Then we can decide.’

‘Righto. Could you open the hatch for me?’

‘My pleasure,’ she replied.

Paul Devrin could leave work whenever he wished: his father ran the company and the company ran several solar systems. In places, it served some of the Great Powers: France, Britain, China, the UFSA and even the Republic of Eden. In other places it worked for itself, controlled only by the distant whisper of international law.

‘My apartment,’ Devrin said, stepping into the lift. It began to rise. His face looked back at him from each of the four mirrored walls, clean and masculine, one step from a caricature of heroism. On occasion, Paul had wondered if his chin ought to be reduced. He worried a lot about his looks. Perhaps it made him look a little too rugged. Maybe it was that which repulsed women, not his exuberant use of cologne or his special bedroom needs. Tonight, however, whatever he did, no matter how bizarre, he would not be refused.

He turned to the lift guard. ‘The delivery men come?’ he demanded.

‘Yes sir.’

‘They made the delivery?’

‘Yes sir. From the factory.’

‘Alright.’ He opened his wallet and took out a random handful of notes in New Yen, Freeland Dollars and Adjusted Sterling. ‘You didn’t see them come, alright?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘You take this and have a good night. You tell anyone, and you’ll have a very bad morning. Got me?’

‘Yes sir.’

The doors opened into the long, red corridor that ended with one door – his. In recesses along the way there were works of art that he felt reflected his personality: a statue of a bullfighter, the bust of a Roman emperor, a photograph of Henry Ford. Two guards waited outside his door with the permanently startled expressions of people whose job gives them a substantial discount on plastic surgery.

‘Good evening sir.’

‘Hey,’ Devrin said. ‘Anything happening?’

‘Nothing,’ said the other guard.

‘My package arrive?’

‘Yes sir. The team from the labs left two hours ago. They left a message in your entrance hall. We scanned it for poison and explosives.’

‘Excellent. You two take the night off, alright?’

They looked at one another, and although neither had a way of telling, for once their surprise was genuine. Devrin watched them get into the lift. There were still several dozen men guarding the lower levels of the building. He was safe. He swiped the door with his card, blew on a neural scanner and put his eye up to a lens. The door swung open, and his shoes clicked on marble as he walked in.

A big, heart-shaped box of chocolates sat on a plinth. He looked at the card on top of it. ‘Your friend is in the guest bedroom. Have a good time! Best regards to you and your dad – the biolabs.’

Devrin shrugged and entered his own room. He took off his suit, undressed to his boxer shorts – new and silky – and his sock-suspenders, then strolled into the bathroom, thoughtfully sniffing his armpits as he went. Of course, it did not matter how well he smelt, or how he looked. It would be a success no matter what. But he had his own personal pride to think about, and he put on some extra aftershave and a fresh dose of deoderant. He even used the bidet.

In his dressing gown, slippers and underwear, Paul Devrin left the bathroom rubbing his hands together. This was going to be good. He stopped in the hall to look in the mirror, checking his teeth for broccoli. ‘Yeer!’ he said to his reflection. ‘We are gonna get it
awn
!’

He picked up the chocolates and put them under his arm. Straightening his lapels, he took hold of the door handles and threw the doors apart. ‘Hey, sexy lady! We are—’

He stopped dead. There was the enormous bed, the bottle of champagne cooling in a silver bucket on the bedside table. But it was not right. A plate lay smashed on the ground, surrounded by raw, scattered oysters. More important, however, was the fact that the person on the bed was a middle-aged, portly man in a white scientist’s coat and no trousers, gagged and bound. Someone at the delivery firm had got their wires very crossed about Devrin’s special tastes.

The man was writhing and making moaning sounds. Paul realised that this was not for his benefit. 

Devrin ducked down and took a gun from behind the nearest pot plant. He stalked over to the bed and pulled a stocking out of the man’s mouth.

‘Doc Petersen!’

‘God dammit!’ cried the man. ‘Damn woman got free!’

‘Got free? What?’

‘She brained me with a plate and stole my keycard. And my pants.’

‘What about the rest of the team?’

‘They’re in the wardrobe. She took their ID and passes too.’

Paul said, ‘But, this isn’t supposed to happen! She’s supposed to obey my every wish! I told them to get me my dream date, not a fat naked scientist!’

‘She must have realised, sir. She must have realised what we made her for, then planned her escape. I’m sorry, sir—’

‘You will be! I’m calling my father! And Waldo!’

Devrin strode out the room, leaving Petersen prone behind him. He snatched an antique cellular phone from a plinth and switched it on.

‘Security? Put out a coded message to my father on Cerberus Three. Tell him I’m going to need a bunch of men and a load more money, maybe even a ship. And get me Waldo, up here, now! Tell him to pull his best man off whatever job he’s got and get him ready to do some serious work. Then I want this place gone over with a fine tooth-comb, atom by atom. Make that an atomic toothcomb.’

A tiny, startled voice made its way up the line. ‘Sir, um, alright, sir.’

‘You are going to locate my ladybot right now, and you will either bring her back to me or shut her down!

Nobody gets to keep my stuff! I want her found!’

‘So, er, who is this bird, then?’ Carveth said. Smith had been dozing in the captain’s chair. Having returned from the roof, he had promptly retired to his cabin and slept for several hours before wandering in to do the same at the helm. He had been dreaming about fighting off an enormous sock, and was quite relieved to be awake again. ‘Sorry?’

‘This Rhianna Mitchell. Who is she then?’

Smith rubbed his head. ‘I’m not sure, actually.’ He groped for the roster sheet, and Carveth put it into his hand. ‘It says here that she helps run a health food shop and hydroponic garden centre. Apparently she’s actively involved in meditation – is that possible? – and is secretary of the Society for Preservation of Endangered Alien Life. I wish I’d known about that before I shot three void sharks this morning. Are they endangered?’