The Devil's Nebula (29 page)

A second later she felt a great heat centimetres from her cheek, and she was momentarily blinded by a sudden, actinic flash.

The gauntlet released its grip instantly, and she rolled away, choking.

Ed was at her side, pulling her to him.

“What happened?” she asked, even though she knew. “I... I didn’t think...”

Ed shook his head. “It’s the latest body-armour, Lania. Programmed to fight on after the death of the wearer.”

She stared down at the fused power-pack on the thigh of the suit, trying not to think about dying at the hands of a dead man.

Ed stepped carefully over the slick of blood and brains and approached the second militia-man in the entrance to the lounge. He took aim and fired, and the power-pack on the second suit went up like a miniature nova.

He relieved the suit of its laser and pulse-gun and rejoined the others.

“I’ve had a thought,” Lania said as they were about to board the dropchute. “We could take the
Hawk
downriver, head off Leah and the others before they reach the opening to the caves.”

Langley said, “And risk getting blown out of the sky by any Shufflers the Weird have patrolling? You’ll need the
Hawk
to get back to the Expansion.”

“The Shufflers are armed?”

The Outcast smiled. “The Shufflers project acid. One lucky strike and the
Hawk
might suffer. We’ll do it our own way, okay?”

“And if the Shufflers are lying in wait for us?”

Langley fixed her with his penetrating blue eyes. “Oh, they will be, but with Villic along we should have prior warning.” He lifted his laser. “And now that we have these...”

Lania considered the fight ahead. “In case we don’t make it back to the
Hawk
, Ed, I think it’d be wise to instruct it to leave and return to the Expansion.”

Langley said, “You can do that?”

She nodded. “And I’ll leave a message in the core, recounting what’s going on here.”

She led the way to the flight-deck, marvelling. It had only been two standard days since they had left the
Hawk
and set off for the clearing.

She slipped into her sling and felt her smartsuit connect. She melded with the core and went through the complex routine of overriding all previous commands. Before programming the ship to leave the planet on auto-pilot and return through the void to the Expansion, she opened her eyes and looked at Langley. “How long should I tell it to wait before getting the hell out?”

Ed looked at the Outcast. “Will twenty-four hours standard give us enough time?”

Langley recalculated the duration into World time. He nodded. “More than enough.”

Lania closed her eyes and instructed the
Hawk
to phase into the void twenty-four hours after they’d left the ship.

She withdrew from the meld and jumped from the sling.

“Okay. All set.”

They left the ship and Villic, riding a Sleer, led the way through the jungle to the fissure.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

M
AATJA REMEMBERED THE
fall, but she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious.

A day after setting out in her seed-boat, she had seen the timber jetty on the far bank and attempted to steer her boat towards it, but the current had proved too strong and had swept the boat past it. She’d been about to jump out and swim for it when the surface of the river was suddenly ripped by rocks, their jagged edges slicing through the surface like blades. She had waited out the rapids, by which time her boat was a kilometre past the jetty. Only then, when the river became calm again, did she dive over the side and swim to shore.

It was while climbing over the bare rocks, back towards the jetty and the upward path, that she slipped sickeningly, fell and cracked her head against a rock.

Now she dragged herself into the shadow of an overhanging ledge and sheltered from the heat of the sun directly overhead.

The journey downriver had taken more than a day. She had approached the jetty at around midday, so it must have been around mid-afternoon that she reached the shore and fell. She remembered coming awake from time to time, only to be pitched back into unconsciousness. She recalled at least two periods of night-time, perhaps three. All in all, she calculated that a couple of days had elapsed since she had left the clearing.

By now, she knew, her father would have been taken by the Weird.

But she had come so far, and she wanted to see their lair.

She ate a couple of handful of berries and, her strength regained, pushed herself to her feet and began climbing over the rocks towards the jetty. The terrain here was free from jungle; the growth began a little further up the hillside, only to peter out again as the incline became the almost sheer side of what looked like a cliff.

Hereabouts the land was different to the jungle where she came from: hills and small mountains erupted from the surface of the planet and it was among these mountains, according to what her father had once told her, that the Weird had their lair.

After two hours of scrabbling over jagged rocks, she came to the jetty and peered upwards. The sun was going down, and the peaks above her head were silhouetted against the last of the day’s light. She could make out the wide, worn path snaking up the hillside, and in the side of the mountain, high above, the dark shape of a cave entrance.

She ate the last of her fruit and berries, then set off up the winding path.

As she climbed, she imagined the bearers carrying a Harvester up the hillside. The way was steep and the footing treacherous with loose rocks and scree – and she could only imagine the great weight of the alien creature. She wondered what she might find at the lair of the Weird, and for the first time she began to feel frightened at what she was doing.

She would go as far as the cave mouth, she thought, and see what she could see.

One hour later, the path levelled off and approached the high arch of the cave. She slowed and looked around. The cave was situated in a great saddle of land, a valley between two rocky outcrops. Beyond, the sun seemed to sit perfectly in the notch of the valley, a silent fiery ball, and the panorama was magnificent.

She approached the cave entrance and peered inside. Fungus grew on the walls, glowing dimly; it was like looking into one of the calm pools she had come across from time to time in the jungle.

She hesitated, then entered the cave. It looked artificial, but it had obviously been cut and widened here and there so that the Harvesters could get through. The floor of the cave was level for perhaps ten metres, then began to slope downwards. She wondered about continuing, but something pushed her onwards. She had come so far, after all; it would be foolish to return now without having seen anything.

She hurried downwards, her faint shadow her only companion. From time to time she thought she heard sounds, and stopped in panic to listen. But the only sound she could hear was the rush of her breath and her heartbeat loud in her ears.

She worked her way down into the heart of the mountain for what seemed like hours, wondering when she might arrive at the lair. Perhaps, she thought, she had come to the wrong place; perhaps the Weird had their lair elsewhere, approached by a concealed entrance so that curious humans like herself could not come snooping.

Then she heard voices.

They were faint and far away, carried in the still air of the cave. She looked around desperately for a place to hide. To her right, high up, was a ledge that seemed to go back a fair way. She scrambled up the sloping wall and rolled onto the natural shelf, cramming herself tightly into the gap. She lay face down, breathing hard and hoping whoever it was did not hear her panicky gasps.

The voices grew louder – a human voice, and a reply so low that she could hardly hear it.

Footsteps approached and passed by beneath her, and she chanced a glance down at whoever it might be.

In the dim fungus light she made out two figures. One was human and the other a stunted Weird manikin, trotting alongside the human as if in an effort to keep up.

She stifled a gasp. She recognised the human. It was an adult called Mattus, who many months ago had been taken by the Weird. They passed from sight, their voices fading.

She waited perhaps five minutes, her heartbeat returning to normal.

She was about to climb down and resume her descent when she heard more footsteps, this time coming from the direction in which Mattus and the Weird had gone. She peered out and seconds later saw Mattus retracing his steps, this time without the alien.

He passed beneath Maatja and continued downwards into the lair.

Without a second thought, she leapt down and followed.

She kept a healthy distance between herself and the Chosen, falling back when the corridor straightened out, then hurrying to catch up when it began zigzagging again.

She wondered if Mattus might lead her to her father, and if so... then how might her father react to finding that she had followed him?

Perhaps, she thought, it might not be a good idea to show herself, at least until she’d found out what was happening down here. She recalled how the Sleer had dealt with the Outcast the other day, and shuddered.

Up ahead, Mattus had come to a halt. Someone, or something, was with him. Maatja crouched behind a knuckle of rock and peered out. Mattus was speaking with a Shuffler in lowered tones, its mass dwarfing the human. It was facing him, and she wondered if it had been coming in the opposite direction. If so, when the Shuffler had finished its conversation with Mattus, it would continue on its way towards her...

She looked around for a better place to conceal herself. Around five metres away she made out a slit in the rock. She stood, hurried back along the corridor and slipped into the crevice. She was surprised to find that it was a second, narrower corridor, also lit by the spreading fungus. She backed further into the tunnel until a bend concealed her from the main corridor.

She waited a long time for the sound of the Shuffler to pass, and when it failed to do so she decided to investigate this second, smaller corridor.

She turned and crept along its length. After five minutes, she made out the first sounds from up ahead, and then saw that the walls of the corridor had turned from green to white as if illuminated by a bright light. She stopped and listened. She heard voices and a sound she had never heard before – a high-pitched buzzing like that of some kind of insect.

She crept cautiously forward, heart beating loudly, and the corridor brightened and the buzzing became louder.

The walls opened out, widening as they entered a vast cavern which was the source of the white light and the buzzing sound.

She crouched as she entered the cavern and looked for a place to hide. She saw a rock, a metre away to her right, and darted behind it.

Then she lifted her head and peered over the rock, as if to verify what her senses had taken in on entering the cavern.

In the middle of the chamber was a pool of light, the width of a long-house, shining white like the brightest moon. It flickered, the light shifting and swirling and giving off a high, insect buzz.

And all around the pool of light were the Weird. She saw the great bulk of a Harvester, and Sleer and Shufflers and the small, spindly manikins – three or four of each kind – and as she watched, a manikin approached the light and stepped into it as if it were a pool of water. The creature was white and as thin as a starving child, with a great bulbous head and vast staring eyes. It leaned forward, as if swimming, and was consumed by the light. No sooner had the manikin vanished than a Shuffler lumbered forward and immersed itself in the light and was taken. Each time a creature vanished into the light, she thought she saw strange, nightmarish images beyond, high buildings and monstrous beasts – but the images lasted only seconds before the white light intensified.

She looked around the cavern, but could not see her father. Then she chastised herself for even thinking that she might find him here. That would have been too much to hope for.

She thought of her return to the Outcasts, and what she would tell Kavan and the others.

As she watched, something
emerged
from the radiant light – a great bloody Sleer, wading from the pool and stepping onto the rock as casually as a bather.

She saw movement across the chamber and stared as Mattus entered through a wide corridor – evidently the same corridor down which she had started to follow him. She watched as he approached the pool of light and, without breaking his stride, walked straight into it and vanished.

She wondered, then, if this was where her father had gone.

She heard a sound, a loud, strangled cry, and when she looked in that direction she saw a Shuffler pointing a thick arm at her.

Beside it, a Sleer looked up, saw her and loped in her direction.

She lost a second to blind panic, before leaping to her feet and darting back into the corridor. She sprinted, knowing how fast the Sleer could move through the jungle and feeling despair. If she could make it to the main corridor without being caught, then secrete herself on the high ledge, perhaps she might succeed in getting out of here alive.

She heard a grunting behind her and gave a reflexive scream, too terrified to look over her shoulder. She sprinted, darting through the passage and hoping that, perhaps, it might just be too narrow a space for the Sleer to run through at full speed.

She had almost reached the main corridor when the grunts grew louder behind her and she could almost feel the Sleer’s noxious breath on her bare back. Something fixed on her upper arm and lifted her off her feet, a sickening wet rubbery grip that had her screaming aloud and kicking out in fright.

The Sleer carried her into the main corridor and turned left, towards the surface. Dazed, she wondered if it was taking her back to the clearing to feed to the Harvester.

She saw movement up ahead and a group of people... humans, unbelievably... came into sight.