Stardogs (21 page)

Navigating the passages of the crashed upside-down ship was difficult. Besides the doors, the un anchored debris which one stumbled across was something of a hazard. Teovan, in the lead, tripped over something soft. It was a body. One of the chambermaids. Tied. Gagged. And shot neatly through the head, from behind. Sam knew that Blower had doped the coffee. He’d helped to tie them up. But somebody else had shot them. As Blower had said, there was no need, really. When the ship blew those still on it would be component atoms.

Sam walked on. He made no comment. But the small of his back was very cold. The maintenance workshop door was fortunately open. Teovan mantled it with ease. His skills as a second-story man gave him a serious advantage over the meaty Brettan when it came to climbing things. He filed the information away for future reference and reached his hand up for the glow-stick. He had a few seconds to spot, grab and secrete a chisel while the heavily-built Viscount struggled to pull himself up and over.

Five minutes later they were back with the rest of the party with five functioning headlights, and a more buoyant state of mind. When the Viscount pulled up on the door-sill and looked in to the upside-down room he saw and heard the Princess’s factotum retching in a corner. The Princess was holding his head and patting his back. He shook his head and the light-beam in surprise. That was really no way for royalty to behave.

A minute or two later they and the welcome lights were being helped back into the room. “There are cutting-torches. If this thing is built at all like Imperial fighters it’ll mean a double skin, but at least we can get through it.” The Viscount was distinctly more cheerful, now that his spaceman’s fear of slow suffocation was eased.

“A big if.” Tanzo Adendorff was awake again. “As things proved, the ship wasn’t a bit like human craft. And of course nobody ever bothered to find out how or from what the Denaari manufactured anything. One of my colleagues held the Denaari were much more primitive than humans, because their buildings, some of which still stand after three millennia, mind you, are irregular.”

“Spare me the history lesson, Lady Adendorff,” said the Viscount tersely. “I think I’ll take a party forward with three of the lights to see if we can reach the airlock. I’d like to take all the able-bodied people. We may need some brute force to get through the forward section.”

“Deo stays. I’ll go. Caro, Leaguesman Wienan, Tanzo and that young girl had better stay. The Lieutenant is still unconscious. Miss… Lila is it? Will you come too?” asked Shari.

The debt-slave smiled at the aristocrat, surprised at hearing that the Princess knew her name. She stood up and slipped the .22 into her waistband. “Lila Tandy Macrae at your service, your Highness.” She gave a small curtsey and suddenly felt remarkably stupid.

The Princess smiled at her. “Well the first piece of service you can offer me is to give me a leg-up. These clothes are hopeless for climbing.” She moved across to the doorway, arms reaching for the sill.

“Una and I will come too,” announced Tanzo Adendorff, getting to her feet. “Nothing wrong with either of us, and who knows, the Viscount might need my lock-picking skills, even if he doesn’t need my advice on the Denaari.”

Passage through the forward section of the ship was difficult but not impossible. It wasn’t so much brute force that was needed as squirm-ability. And care. The ripped metal edges were dangerously sharp. One couldn’t move fast, and the large Viscount who was supposedly leading this expedition was the person who found the going most difficult. Thus it was that the whole party were right there with him, rather than him being a safe distance ahead when they heard the weak cry for help. Too late the Viscount remembered the other task that the imperial agents who were supposed to be his team were meant to have done.

“It must be one of the servants that those murderers didn’t kill!” said Shari. “Poor soul. We must get to him.”

Sam Teovan started. All the servants had been put into a room together, near the kitchen. And they’d all been thoroughly and efficiently gagged. He moved forward toward the door from which the cry had come. “Not you.” The Viscount pulled him back roughly. “I’ll go.”

But Martin Brettan was unable to fit through the narrow gap that was all that remained of the doorway. The leaguesman’s debt-slave tried. She was able to wriggle through and into the room beyond. A few minutes later she pushed someone out of the gap to blink in the torchlight.

Shari looked at the weak, spoiled plump face and sighed. “Jarian. What a coincidence. What a happy family reunion. Did Daddy send you along for a bit of murder practice? Let’s kill Auntie, eh?”

Prince Jarian was affronted, even if he was scared and confused. The old bag never treated him with respect. He
hated
her. But obviously she couldn’t know about his falling out with his father. “Aunt Shari.” He was damned if he’d accord her her title either. “Where are we? What happened?”

She shook her head at him, grimacing. “Come down, you idiot. Later, if we can get out of here, I shall take great pleasure in explaining it to you.”

Part of the corridor ahead was impassable, but by detouring through two shattered cabins they reached the airlock. It didn’t respond at all to Martin Brettan’s hasty jab at the power switch. Staring at it in the torchlight the Viscount found a small flanged wheel set into the very center of the lock-door. He tried to turn it. It wouldn’t budge.

“All Denaari threading is anti-clockwise. Hargreaves suggests that this implied that they had sinistral dominant brains,” said Tanzo dryly. “I suggest you try turning the other way.”

He did. The inner lock door slowly swung open. It was just as well. They could have burned away with cutting-torches at the outer hull of the Imm class vessel for a week without even getting it warm.

The Viscount stepped into the lock. It was not a wide space, although Denaari tall, and thus only Shari stepped in beside him. The lock behind them had to be closed before the outer lock would budge. So once the door behind them was closed and sealed, Martin Brettan spun the second manual lock-screw. The door groaned open about eight inches. A cascade of fine, faintly warm sand rushed in as it did. Within seconds it was already up around their knees.

“Close it!” she screamed at him.

The outer door began to close, and the sand cascade slowed. But then, with a horrible grinding noise the door…. stuck. Sand poured in steadily through the egg-timer crack. “I can’t.” He tried harder, exerting every ounce of his beefy muscle. The door closed perhaps a tenth of an inch more. Sand still filtered in through the crack. “Unless we can close this door the inner one won’t open,” he said through clenched teeth, still straining. The trickling sand fell inexorably.

The sun was hot. It looked to be about midafternoon. Juan had given up shouting. Obviously nobody was coming. Either nobody had lived through the crash, or nobody cared, or nobody had heard him. Anyway, he was hoarse. And very thirsty. And no longer quite so alone. Above him, drifting in a slow twist were some birds. Big birds, for all that they were high up. They were getting lower, however. Sooner or later they’d come and pick his eyes out and he wasn’t going to be able to do anything other than scream. He wished anyone or anything else familiar and friendly was here. A small tear escaped. What had happened to Rat? Poor Rat.

As if on cue a pink nose whiffled into his face. And then wriggled into the gel that had safely transported it here and down into Juan’s shirt. How?

The stuff allowed him to move enough to breathe! So…. small movements…. Gently, slowly the arm he’d strained and struggled so to free earlier was lifted. It came free of the gel with a plop. Two minutes later he was sitting on the barren earth of the Denaari motherworld in front of the escape pod, laughing hysterically, stroking Rat.

There are many myths of a first man and woman. None of them have Eve saying to Adam, “I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man on earth.” This does not mean it could not have happened, just that no ancestors will relate this tale.

The Veda of Holy Matrimony

Shari dug around the seal. The sand-gap in the door seal was a mere inch and a half. But airlocks are logically designed to only allow one door to open when the other is air-tight. The stuff was so fine and so dry it wouldn’t pile. Despite her digging Martin couldn’t move the door another hundredth of an inch. He sat down on the sand-surface. Measured carefully with his thumb. Looked at his elegant chronometer. Looked for something to mark the wall with, and settled for spittle.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing how fast it is coming in. It looks like about a cubic foot every… say three minutes. We must have about 20 cubic feet left in all. We’re going to drown in sand in less than an hour.”

“We must be able to do something, surely?”

“With what? We’ve the clothes we stand in.”

“And that pistol you were brandishing earlier. Shoot the lock.”

He shook his head, looking grim in the torchlight. “Ricochet. There is nowhere to hide in here.”

“Well, let’s use our clothes. Off with them, Viscount. We can at least stop more sand coming in that crack.”

He shrugged and began to take off his jacket. “We either drown in sand, or suffocate for lack of air.”

“We also pound on the inner door. Perhaps they can get us out.”

He shrugged again, putting the torch on top of his jacket. “I’ll keep my pistol. It won’t make much of a chock in that crack, and we might want it when the sand gets neck high.”

“Very well. Turn your back please.”

“Why?”

“Because I am taking all my clothes off. You can start pounding on the inner door.”

He turned away with a snort, and began thumping the inner door. Here she was, about to die a slow unpleasant death and she worried about modesty. She was, probably, as legend had it, a bloody hermaphrodite. She hadn’t turned away while he stripped, had she?

Shari might have allowed questions of morality to influence her. But her real aim was to avoid revealing to him the stationer-made bullet-proof jacket, the needle gun and the stiletto Deo had taught her to use. She might be going to die. But then, she might not. And as Deo had repeatedly said it was better to die with aces still in your sleeve than to reveal them prematurely. She’d noted the Viscount’s very professional shoulder holster with care. She’d always had her suspicions about the man. She wondered whom he’d worked for. Not that it made much difference now, one way or the other.

The cutting torch hadn’t made any impression at all. Sam, the only person who had known how to use it, kicked the obdurate door. “You’d think the bastards would put another fuckin’ emergency release somewhere!”

“Surely if there was it would be on the door? Or near the door?” Lila shone her torch anxiously at door area.

Tanzo slapped her forehead. “Of course. A wingspan.” She pushed Sam out of the way, and stood against the door, carefully lining her fingers up with the odd flanged wheel. “Put your fingers on the wall here where my right shoulder is. Watch out. It is a bit warm from that torch”