The Devil's Nebula (17 page)

O
NE HOUR LATER
they ate a meal in the lounge of the
Hawk
. The atmosphere was subdued. Commander Gorley, they discovered on their return, had left the ship along with the remaining three militia.

When they finished the meal, Carew turned in his seat and stared out through the long viewscreen. The sun had gone down a little further; now only a quarter of the bloated red disc showed over the horizon, and a bloody light suffused the eerie landscape.

Alleghri was speaking. “...And that’s another strange thing. We’ve detected not a trace of anything living on the planet, right down to the microbial. Nothing. It’s as if whatever accounted for the aliens wiped out every other form of life, too.”

Carew watched Lania as she smiled across at the strikingly handsome woman. “What could have done that?”

Alleghri shrugged. “Search me. I’ve seen nothing like it before.”

“And you’re an expert in such matters?” he asked.

Alleghri stared at him, her expression neutral. “Degree in microbiology, Borussia University. I was seconded for two years to the Expansion’s Scientific Unit.”

“Not just,” Lania said, looking across at Carew, “a pretty face.”

Carew turned and stared through the viewscreen, wondering at Lania’s sudden friendship with the woman. He considered what Choudri had told him earlier, about Lania’s feelings for him, and wondered if she’d taken up with the guard in some kind of convoluted mind-game.

His only worry was that the woman might be manipulating Lania for her own ends; he wouldn’t put it past Gorley to have ordered Alleghri to work her way into his pilot’s affections. He’d have a word with Lania later.

Outside, the three militia men and the comparatively slight Gorley were crossing the square. A minute later Carew heard the sigh of the chute as it deposited the men in the ship, then the thud of heavy footsteps as the militia moved to their quarters.

In due course, Gorley joined them in the lounge.

Carew told him about the crashed starship, but Gorley interrupted him and said, “I know. I investigated the wreck myself. It appears it belonged to the natives of this planet.”

“The same race,” Carew said, “that sent identical ships across Vetch space to the Expansion.”

Gorley lowered his water flask and stared at Carew. “You appear extremely well informed, Captain.”

Across the table, Director Choudri leaned back in his seat and stroked his chin.

Carew said, “However hard the authorities try to suppress information, Marshall, it inevitably leaks. As it happens, we also came across a downed ship on Hesperides.”

“I know very little about the other alien ships,” Gorley said. “Not my department.”

“No? Not even when the cultists we’re going after turn out to hail from one of the planets where an alien ship came down? Not even when they formed some kind of cult around the same starship?”

Gorley’s severe hatchet face gave nothing away. “What are you trying to say, Captain?”

“Merely that I think you know what’s going on here. Probably not everything, but more than you’re letting on.”

Gorley took another long swallow of iced water. He looked around the group, every one of whom was watching him. “You seem to know as much as I do, Captain. Over one hundred years ago, seven alien starships entered Expansion territory. Only two were detected at the time and tracked by our interceptors. Like the other five, which we discovered later, they came down on sparsely populated colony worlds.” He hesitated, then went on. “I will tell you this: when we made investigations on the crashed ships, we discovered no signs of life aboard them. The mystery has remained until this day.”

Choudri said, “And what we’ve discovered here only deepens the enigma.”

Gorley went on, “A cult grew up around the starships, perhaps an inevitability given the mystery of their provenance and mission, and the susceptibility of the human mind to superstition.”

Carew said, “How did the cultists from Vercors know where the starship came from? Did they discover something aboard the ship?”

Gorley smiled, an unfamiliar expression on his face. “That, we do not know. Another mystery to add to all the others.”

Carew considered the Expansion man. “And the Expansion knew nothing about the colonists’ mission to cross Vetch space before they embarked on it?”

“Captain Carew,” Gorley said evenly, “I suspect you are paranoid in assuming that the Expansion has spies on every planet, but may I remind you that this is not so. And anyway, this was over a hundred years ago, and Vercors was then not part of the Expansion hegemony. We had no idea, and little interest, in cultish groups setting off on fool missions across enemy territory.”

Carew smiled at the Marshall. “Then isn’t it all the more strange that now, a century later, you’re suddenly interested?”

Gorley returned his smile. “By no means. It would be perverse of us if we were to ignore the distress call of fellow human colonists, would it not?”

Alleghri murmured something to Lania, then rose from the table and strode from the room. A minute later Lania excused herself and left the lounge. Carew watched her hurry off. He chastised himself for feeling responsible for her welfare. He was not her father, after all. But he’d known Lania over ten years now, and old habits died hard.

One of the guards, out of armour, came into the lounge and murmured something to Gorley, who listened attentively. The guard withdrew.

Choudri looked at Gorley and said, “Well?”

“They ran a series of analyses on the alien remains,” he said, “and not unsurprisingly, they found no trace of any bacteria or virus that might have been responsible for the deaths.”

He finished his meal and stood. “I’ll give the order for our departure from the planet in one hour,” he said. “Gentlemen.”

When he’d left the lounge, Carew turned to Choudri. “I’m tempted to say that he was playing his cards close to his chest.”

The Indian nodded. “I’ll talk to him later, alone. I might be able to elicit a little more.”

Choudri rose and made to leave the lounge. As he was passing, Carew restrained him with a hand on his sleeve. “Anish, might I ask why you’re siding with me in this matter?”

He watched the Indian closely as he replied.

“Are you familiar with the old saying that it is often wise to make one’s enemy’s enemy one’s friend?”

Choudri nodded to Carew and left the lounge.

Carew remained where he was seated on the banquette, drinking his water and watching the sun slide imperceptibly over the horizon.

As much as he liked Anish Choudri, he was aware that there was always the possibility that the Director was a hard-line Expansion man through and through, and was playing some sort of double bluff.

He would have to tread warily in the days ahead.

As for Lania...

He left the lounge and moved to the flight-deck. Jed was in his sling, examining readouts on the screen. “Where’s Lania?”

“Still in her berth. She’ll be down shortly.”

Perhaps thirty minutes later, Lania strode onto the flight-deck, a spring in her step.

“A word, if I may, Lania.”

He moved to the nose of the ship and stood before the viewscreen, staring out at the sun. Lania joined him. “I always think sunsets are so romantic, don’t you, Ed?”

He looked at her. “I just want you to be careful, okay?”

She looked taken-aback. “Careful?”

“With the militia-woman... What’s her name? Alleghri. I want you to remember that she’s Expansion, understand?”

She stared at him, and he thought he detected a sudden flare of anger in her chestnut eyes. She said, “You’re not my keeper, Ed.”

“Listen, Lania – you can do whatever you want, with whomever you want. That’s none of my business. But... I don’t want to see you get hurt by someone who might – I say
might
– be using you, okay?”

She said, emphatically, “Gina isn’t using me,” and strode over to her sling.

Carew sighed and turned back to the view as Director Choudri and Commander Gorley entered the flight-deck and took their seats.

Five minutes later, the
Hawk
rose slowly from the square and Carew watched the dead city fall away beneath them.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A
S MUCH AS
Lania may have hoped Ed’s words of caution about her affair with Gina were the result of jealousy, he was probably incapable of that emotion. He was just being solicitous of her welfare – which was probably as good as it was going to get.

She slipped from her sling and stared through the viewscreen.

They had moved a lot further in-system since leaving the outer planet, and now the fiery sun took up fully half the viewscreen. Straight ahead was a vast blue planet, striated with chiffon strips of cloud, a small grey moon in transit across its azure face. Lania thought that she had probably never seen a system so beautiful.

She stretched in her sling and smiled across at Jed. “How long was I out?”

“Less than an hour.”

She shook her head. “Felt like minutes.”

She thought of Gina, in her arms a little over an hour ago. The big, tough militia-woman had told Lania that she felt safe in her embrace. And Ed had said that Gina might be using her!

“So the colony ship is somewhere down there?” she said.

The world was colossal. She took in the calibrations that stretched across the foot of the viewscreen and checked its magnification. According to these readings, the planet was four times the size of Earth and five astronomical units from its supergiant primary.

She wondered if the colonists had found a suitable, Earth-like world on which to settle.

But why the distress signal?

Ed was beside her. “The signal didn’t come from down there, Lania.” He pointed to the small, grey moon. “It came from there.”

She flashed him a look, but found it hard to feel resentment. She smiled. “The moon? It doesn’t look that hospitable to me.”

He nodded. “I agree.”

Choudri and Gorley were standing before the viewscreen, talking. Choudri nodded, then turned and said to Lania. “Could you take us down to the moon? We’ll make a few orbits and home in on the signal.”

She nodded and integrated with the smartcore. The ship flowed around her, moving to her commands.

When she emerged and placed the
Hawk
on auto-pilot, the view through the screen was of a rocky grey world with a close, curved horizon.

Ed pointed. “There!”

She saw the streak of silver on the horizon, took control of the
Hawk
and slowed its approach. She brought them down gently beside the long, boxy colony vessel, the
Hawk
dwarfed by its mammoth dimensions.

Choudri said, “Well, at least it seems to be in one piece. I was fearing that it might have been destroyed on landing.”

Jed was reading from his screen. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s no atmosphere out there.”

Lania looked at Director Choudri. “When did the ship arrive here?”

“I can’t say exactly, but perhaps sixty, seventy years ago.”

Ed nodded. “With luck, if all the systems are running at optimum, then the colonists will still be in suspension. What were the operating parameters on those old suspension units?”

Gorley said, “Perhaps two hundred years, if conditions were optimum.”

Lania thought of being a colonist, woken from cold sleep over a hundred years after setting off, to find an Expansion vastly different from the one they had left.

If they agreed to being returned to the Expansion, that was.

She looked at Director Choudri. “Just what are your plans for the colonists, Director?”

“Our plans?”

“If they’re still in there, sleeping, are you going to haul them back home?”

He looked at Commander Gorley, who said, “Our remit is to locate the colonists and assess the sustainability of any colony they might have founded. It would appear that the latter is a futile hope, now. Our first task is to assess the condition of any survivors. Only then, and in consultation with the colonist’s elected representatives, will we make any decision as to their future welfare.”

Ed said, “You must have had contingency plans for this situation, Marshall?”

If Gorley did, then he was reluctant to divulge them. Instead he said, “I’ll take three militia over and report back.”

Lania said, “I’d like to come, too. I’ve brought you all this far – I want to see inside the ship.”

Gorley was looking at her, his thin smile making him look like an amused goat. He nodded. “Gina will no doubt help you suit up.”

Colouring, she hurried from the flight-deck and found Gina Alleghri.

T
HE SURFACE OF
the moon was as grey as gunpowder and as fine as talcum. The regolith kicked up with their every step and hung eerily in the low gravity.

She looked up, and the view took her breath away. Above the becalmed colony vessel, the vast bright blue planet hung silhouetted against the even vaster supergiant. This close, she could see great spurts of fiery ejecta and loops of molten matter spewing millions of kilometres from the sun’s surface.

A tinny voice sounded in her earpiece. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

She looked at Gina, beside her. The woman was gazing through her faceplate at the view, her expression transfixed.

“I’ve seen plenty of suns in my time,” Lania said, “but never one like that.”

“I was born and brought up on Dancer’s Drift, Antares, so I saw this kind of thing every day. But I haven’t been home in years. This brings it all back.”

Gina’s commanding officer up ahead snapped, “When you two’ve finished admiring the view?”

Lania grinned at her and moved across the surface to the main group: two bulky militia, their armour reflecting the red light of the sun, accompanied by the suited figures of Gorley and Choudri.

They were staring up at the entrance hatch of the downed colony vessel. It was sealed. So far as Lania could make out, the ship had suffered no structural damage on landing.