Starship Home (36 page)

At the waterhole, Harold, Zoe and Rocky hastily filled two buckets each with water, and headed back to the starship as fast as they could, while on the bridge, the screens were again alive with swirling colors and fragmented images. The time of the Great Exit. Zachary playing guitar. Zoe in a rage. Meg and the Don. Looters outside, staring at the ship.

But this last image was not part of Guinevere’s dream. The Looters were really there! The Eldest moved to the open hatchway, beckoning the others to follow him, and by the time Zoe, Harold and Rocky got back with their buckets of water there was no sign of the Looters’ presence. Harold, panting, turned to Rocky and said, ‘We can take it from here. You go back to the castle, tell them to bring the Don. Show them whose side you’re on!’ Rocky set down his two full buckets of water and ran off, and Zoe and Harold went inside. In the starship feeding area, they poured their four buckets of water into the feeding pit, then moved out again, ran along a corridor, and found themselves facing the Eldest and his gang of Looters! ‘What you do with Dark One?’ he croaked.

‘Dark One need water,’ Zoe said, thinking
I’m beginning to talk like these nightmares!

‘Why you give Dark One water-drink! Dark One speaks in my head! Dark One says ‘give me blood-drink!’

‘I somehow don’t think he can be reasoned with,’ Harold murmured to Zoe, and she agreed, so they threw their buckets at the Eldest and his followers and turned and ran. Swiftly disentangling themselves from the buckets, the Looters, led by the Eldest, pursued them in a screaming human wave. As they ran, Harold and Zoe were shouting ‘Guinevere! Guinevere! Help!’ but no response came for Guinevere was still locked within her fever dreams.

Zoe and Harold came running around a bend in the corridor, and Harold spotted an open hatch. ‘In here!’ he yelled, and they dodged through into what turned out to be one of the ship’s many storerooms. As they crouched behind one of the many strangely shaped metallic crates which almost filled the space, the Looters streamed on past the open hatch. They looked at each other with relief, and then began to creep out from hiding when they heard, ‘Foodies? Dearest little foodies? You hiding from Eldest?’ And indeed it was he, the Eldest, leading his followers into the storeroom. They froze. ‘Come to Dark One. Dark One want you be part of him.’

They worked their way backwards, back into hiding, and then around another crate, and they had the open hatchway in view when they heard a thump, and then a voice saying, ‘Foods here my children!’ The voice and the thump which preceded it had both come from above them, and they looked up to see the Eldest, his sacrificial sickle raised, standing on the crate they were hiding behind! But the hatchway was unguarded, and they took to their heels, went through it accelerating all the time and into the corridor, only to find there were Looters there as well! Retreat seemed a good idea, but as they turned, the Eldest and the rest of his band streamed out of the hatchway, trapping them between two sets of Looters. They were closing in when Harold’s whole body stiffened, his eyes rolled back in his head so they showed only the whites, and he intoned in what he fancied was the voice of a seer, ‘Dark One speak in my head! Dark One say!’ It stopped the Looters in their tracks. Harold went on. ‘Let my people go!’ And like a sleepwalker he started to walk away from the Eldest toward the second group. Zoe followed him, and the Looters slowly divided before them. They had almost pulled it off, when Harold pushed it just a little too far by saying, ‘Dark One say “punish whoever harms my servants”,’ and the Eldest suddenly realized he was being conned. ‘Blasphemers!’ he shrieked. ‘They foods! Dark One speak to me, not to foods!’ and he led the charge after Harold and Zoe. As they ran, Zoe mouthed: ‘Great! Now they think we’re blasphemers as well!’

‘It worked 90 percent!’ protested Harold. ‘That’s a good mark!’

They rounded a corner, saw another open hatchway coming up and dodged through it, finding themselves in the cavernous hold. It was like trying to hide on a gigantic basketball court, but they kept running and the Looters kept running as if neither side could stop. They were in the centre of the hold and the Looters were surrounding them when Harold yelled ‘Guinevere! Time you woke up!’

On the bridge, the screens swirled with colors and shapes, and then, as Guinevere slowly awoke, one of the screens began to find focus and resolution. It showed Harold and Zoe in the hold, surrounded by slavering Looters chanting ‘Foods! Foods! Foods!’ drooling at the prospect of this, their next cannibal feast. Guinevere, fully awake now, murmured ‘Oh my children!’ while in the hold Harold was saying to Zoe, ‘I just can’t believe I’m going to be eaten by people with low IQs,’ and Zoe was replying ‘I just can’t believe I’m going to be eaten full stop.’

And then, when all seemed lost, Guinevere manifested alongside them. She was weak and her image was trembling but when she spoke to the Eldest her voice had its old resonance. ‘You! Begone! Leave this place lest I smite thee and thy loathsome crew!’

The Eldest sensed her weakness. ‘Who say?’

‘I say!’ She was breathing deeply, gathering strength and her appearance was changing. The nun’s robe was flowing out, parts of it separating into black scaly legs which ended in hideous scarlet talons. The Eldest and the Looters were backing away, eyes widening, as Harold and Zoe inched their way toward the hatchway, both knowing that Guinevere could not maintain the illusion for very long. She continued to change, growing darker, larger, scalier, and everyone in the hold gasped as finally Guinevere became a dragon with black, red-tipped scales. Her terrible jaws opened. Flame licked out of her fanged mouth. The Eldest was in the grip of a religious ecstasy and turned to his people. ‘Dark One is among us!’ he roared. The Looters were kneeling and chanting. ‘Dark One! Dark One!’ The Eldest was the only one of them standing, sickle held high. ‘I, Eldest, have led you to Dark One’s temple! Deep inside Iron Castle stored up for you since Dark One vomit world egg, this temple wait. Now Eldest has led pilgrim Human Race to centre of mystery! Time is coming to end, so is time for sacrifice, time for Dark One to drink blood of foods!’

And now the dragon manifestation was dissolving back into Guinevere, and then the image she created tore into rags and was gone, leaving Harold and Zoe surrounded by chanting Looters! On the bridge the image of the hold also tore into rags and dissolved into dark swirling forms. Guinevere was unconscious again and now the Looters were moving in.

Outside the starship, the two buckets of water were still sitting where Rocky had left them, and now into the clearing came Rocky leading a party consisting of Meg, Father John, and Ulf and a Troll warrior carrying the Don on a stretcher. They called out to Guinevere but received no answer, and Rocky, seeing the two buckets of water, opined that Zoe and Harold had been to the waterhole and back again in his absence. Meg led the way into the starship, and they reached the bridge without incident. When they got there they found that the lights were dim, and the screens were swirling black and grey. Guinevere’s vital signs were fading. Meg called out for Harold and Zoe but there was no response. Ulf and the warrior meanwhile laid down the stretcher with the Don on it and waited, but the medipod was shut tight and Meg’s pleas to Guinevere to awaken were in vain.

And then suddenly the bridge was full of Looters! They had crept silently up to the open door, and then rushed in like a human wave. Ulf, Rocky and the Troll warrior had scarcely time to draw their swords before they were engulfed by the Looters, and they went down fighting, but were swiftly bound hand and foot by their attackers.

Looters now entered the hold, carrying Meg, the Don, Ulf, Rocky, Father John and the Troll warrior high above their heads and chanting ‘Eat! Eat! Eat!’ while others were outside dragging dead branches up the ramp and through the hatchway into the starship. There was movement in the undergrowth flanking the clearing, and sharp eyes were watching what was going on.

In the hold, Looters dragged the dead branches to where a fire was already burning, while other Looters were justifying their name by looting, breaking open metallic crates and examining the contents. Some contained granular materials which looked like variously colored sands, several were filled with a glutinous gel, but there was one which represented paydirt of some kind. The Eldest was looking with great interest at an opened crate containing a glowing crystal about the size of a human head. He knew instantly what it was. ‘Eye of Dark One!’ he shouted. ‘Dark One speak in my head, Dark One say give blood to my eye!’ and he took the crystal and carried it to where, in front of the fire, Looters were constructing a sacrificial altar from metallic crates. The Eldest reverently put the crystal down at the centre of the altar, made a minute adjustment, and then nodded his satisfaction.

The trussed prisoners had been laid in a row, but Ulf had worked his way around so that his feet were near Rocky’s hands. ‘In my boot,’ said Ulf, ‘spare knife.’

‘Which boot?’ asked Rocky.

‘Both boots,’ Ulf whispered, ‘boots are called boots because they’re where you keep your boot knives.’

Rocky manouevred himself around until he managed to extract a knife from one of Ulf’s boots, and he then began sawing away at Ulf’s bonds.

On the bridge, someone was entering, and switches were being thrown.

And in the hold, Rocky almost had Ulf’s bonds sawn through when Looters pulled them apart and snatched the knife. Meanwhile, the Eldest was moving over to Meg and Zoe. ‘Old woman sacrifice,’ he said, to Meg’s increasing chagrin, ‘young woman sacrifice. Once you escaped Dark One but Dark One follow. Dark One hunter in the night!’ He gestured at them, and Looters picked up Zoe and Meg and carried them toward the fire. The women looked at each other and then at the fire. It was a serious gulp moment. And then suddenly, Slarnstaff bolts fired from somewhere near the roof of the hold dropped the Looters carrying them! Everyone looked up to where the bolts came from and what they saw were automated Slarnstaffs attached high on the bulkheads, swivelling to select new targets.

The Eldest had not survived to become leader of a cannibal tribe without developing finely honed survival instincts and they served him well now. He grabbed the glowing crystal from the improvised altar and ran off with it under his arm, as Slarnstaff bolts dropped two more of his followers. The others were running for the exit. ‘Guinevere?’ Zoe called, ‘is that you doing this?’ But there was no answer.

Looters fled along corridors filled now with blue smoke which was pouring out of slits in the bulkheads, and on the bridge, Marine and Zachary watched them on the screens as Marine worked manual controls, using the gas and Slarnstaff bolts to herd the Looters all in the same direction. ‘What is that gas?’ asked Zachary, and Marine replied ‘Disinfectant,’ she said, ‘and after the state you people have got the ship into, she needs it. But there’s poison gas if you’d prefer I used that?’ ‘Guinevere wouldn’t approve,’ Zachary replied, ‘she doesn’t like any killing.’

Marine was puzzled at this. ‘But she’s a legend, a great warrior. She’s fought pirate starships and Ursoid troop carriers between the stars.’

‘Well maybe she’s mellowed,’ Zachary said, ‘but I know we’re going to be in heaps of trouble with her if we start killing people, even Looters.’ Marine depressed two other pads and Looters, running panic-stricken along a corridor, found one hatchway closing and another opening. They poured through it and then screams and cries came from the area beyond.

‘Where’s that you herded them into?’ Zachary asked and Marine smiled beneath her translator mask. ‘Garbage disposal room,’ she said.

The Looters were indeed up to their necks in wet garbage. The place was lit dimly by the crystal that the Eldest was holding up above his head. Suddenly there were sounds like a gigantic bath emptying and on one side of the starship a chute dropped down and a mixture of Looters and wet garbage flowed out. The mess and the stench were unbelievable, even by Looter standards, and as the Looters began crawling out, the ship’s anti-meteorite cannons started tracking them, firing at their heels to keep them moving. They broke into a run and rushed like a howling rabble into the forest.

In the hold, Ulf and Rocky were now loose from their bonds and each with a knife in hand was going about freeing the others. As the last of the party was freed, Zachary and Marine entered the hold, Zachary with his best con-man’s flashing smile pasted on. Meg was not easily won over. ‘I thought you two had deserted us.’

‘I got to feeling bad about leaving you all to look after yourselves.’ And then he shrugged and added, ‘And I missed you guys.’

‘Enough of this,’ said Harold. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. All that Slarnstaff firing, the other starship’ll have us pin-pointed, they’ll be here any second, we’ll be caught!’

‘Hold on!’ responded Meg, ‘the whole point of coming here was to get the Don into the medipod to get healed and I’m not leaving without that happening. You want to run, run, but I’m staying!’

Zoe joined in. ‘And no one’s thinking about Guinevere! Our friend! The one who brought us home! The one who’s saved our skins a thousand times, no one’s thinking about her! Well I don’t care if I do get caught, I’m staying and I’m going to try and save her!’

‘The Slarn’ll save her,’ Harold reasoned, ‘and she’ll go back to doing what she’s been doing and this’ll all seem like a bit of an adventure holiday.’

But Zoe was adamant. ‘I’m not deserting her when she needs us! She’s our friend! She’s the best friend we ever had!’

There was a silence, and nobody quite knew where to look, and then slowly, in the middle of them, Charles de Josselin manifested. They were looking at the transparent image of the 17
^th
century French musketeer, and he was speaking to them. ‘You? Are her friends?’ Used as they had become to Guinevere’s manifestations, they were not as taken aback as they might have been a few weeks before, but the appearance was nevertheless startling.

Zachary was the first to get his breath back. ‘And who are you?’