The Devil's Nebula (34 page)

Langley swung his rifle and aimed at Jed.

“No!” Carew hissed.

Jed had recovered from his funk and rolled from the light, and Carew felt a welling of relief as he watched the engineer take up the fallen militia captain’s pulse-gun. Jed knelt and swept the laser across the chamber, discharging a wide beam of blue light and incinerating three Shufflers and a pair of Sleer that were bearing down on Lania and Alleghri.

And he’d always thought his engineer a pusillanimous, lily-livered chicken.

Jed saw Carew and he pushed himself to his feet, sprinting around the white light. Lania and Alleghri took the opportunity to run, bent double, towards the rock behind which Carew and Langley crouched.

Jed arrived, panting, and Carew gripped him, “Good to have you back, Jed.”

“Where the hell have you been, boss? I thought you were dead!”

“It’s a long story. Once we’re safely aboard the
Hawk
, okay?”

Lania arrived with Alleghri in tow. Lania grinned at Jed. “I think I owe you one, runt.”

Jed stared down at the weapon in his hand, appearing surprised at his sudden courage.

Carew searched the chamber. “Where the hell is Gorley?” he said to himself. Then he saw the Expansion man, cowering in the cover of a rock ten metres away.

He said to Langley, “Cover me while I fetch the Marshall.”

He left the upright rock and sprinted across the chamber, aware of a Sleer to his right. He heard a hiss, and the creature fell to the ground under Langley’s laser beam.

Carew reached Gorley and gripped the man’s arm. The Commander looked up, his dark eyes petrified. Carew hauled him to his feet and half-carried him back across the chamber.

They rejoined the others. “Right,” Langley said. “All we have to do now is get out of here. This way.”

Lania and Alleghri laid down covering fire as the others sprinted from the chamber. Langley took Gorley’s arm and half-dragged him towards the tunnel where they’d entered, Jed in pursuit.

Carew dropped to his knees before the niche where he’d left Maatja. The girl was squeezed even further into the recess, eyes tight shut and hands pressed over her ears.

She jumped when Carew reached out and touched her arm. “I said I’d be back.”

She opened her eyes and the sudden look of joy on her pinched face brought tears to his eyes. “On my back,” he said. She jumped onto him and he rose, staggering under her weight, and ran after the others.

Behind him, Lania fired back into the chamber, yelling “Run! Run! Run!” as she covered their retreat.

They left the lair of the Weird and made their way to the surface of World.

L
ANGLEY LED THE
party through the jungle on a route parallel with the fissure.

At one point Carew asked Lania, “How long before the
Hawk
lifts off..?”

She consulted with her smartsuit and said, “Four hours, give or take a few minutes.”

He looked across at Langley and raised his eyebrows. The Outcast replied, “It’ll be touch and go, Ed. If we keep on without stopping, we might just make it.”

Seeing how Carew was flagging, Lania said, “Here, I’ll take the girl.”

Maatja clambered from his back and settled on Lania’s like a monkey.

They set off again, alert for Sleer and Shufflers. How tragic it would be now, Carew thought, if they were to be stopped so close to gaining the safety of the
Hawk
.

“Do you think,” Gorley said as they ran through the jungle, “that once we reach the
Hawk
, you might find the time to explain to me just what the hell is going on?”

Carew glanced at the Expansion man. He would have an apology to make, after all the explanations were out of the way.

Enemy mine, he thought.

“We’ll have plenty of time for that on the flight back,” he promised.

When they’d been jogging through the undergrowth for what seemed like hours, Carew looked across at Lania. “How long before the
Hawk
...?” he panted.

“Three hours, Ed,” she replied. “Maybe a little over.”

“I’m beat.”

“Keep on, Ed. You can do it. Think of all those cold beers back on the
Hawk
.”

“Cold beers...”

“Ice cold beers, Ed. And plenty of them.”

They ran on, Carew hallucinating condensation-dewed beer flasks in a bid to take his mind off the pain in his legs.

The sun was directly overhead, periodically penetrating the jungle canopy and sending down searing rays of heat. Up ahead, Lania jogged along at an even place, seemingly unperturbed by the weight of the girl on her back.

Jed ran after her, clutching the pulse-gun protectively to his chest – the symbol, Carew thought, of his new-found bravery.

A while later he called out, “Lania... how long now?”

She shouted over her shoulder, “The
Hawk
lifts-off in around eleven minutes.”

“Langley,” Carew panted, “Please tell me we’re nearly there.”

The Outcast nodded. “Five minutes, ten at the most.”

Up ahead, Lania accelerated, Gina Alleghri beside her.

T
EN MINUTES LATER
the streamlined shape of the
Hawk
came into sight, and Carew almost wept with relief.

They stumbled through the last few metres of undergrowth, then crunched through the cindered vegetation. Lania entered the code and slapped the entry panel, and the hatch sighed open. She dived aboard, followed by Alleghri, Gorley and Jed.

Carew paused and turned to Langley. “The offer’s still open, Langley. We could take you with us, along with –”

“My place is with my people, Ed. Especially now... now that Villic is dead.” He smiled. “My people need a leader.”

Carew passed Langley his laser. “We’ll be back. I promise you now, we’ll be back.”

Langley looked at Maatja. “And the girl?”

Carew stared at the thin child, something tugging his heart. Briefly, he considered taking her with him, back to the Expansion – then dismissed the idea. Her home, for all its hardships, was here on World.

“She won’t be safe with her people, now,” he said.

Langley nodded. “She has a friend among my people, Ed. We’ll make her welcome.”

Carew said, “Her sister, Hahta, was fed to the Harvester. Maatja will have to be told.”

“I’ll see to it, Ed.” He moved across to the girl and spoke to her. She clutched the Outcast’s hand, and Carew stepped into upchute. Before the hatch sealed behind him, Maatja raised a hand and smiled in farewell.

He returned the gesture.

He rose to the flight-deck to find Lania in her sling. “I’ve stopped the pre-set command, Ed. I’m running through take-off diagnostics. We should be out of here in about ten minutes.” She smiled across at Gina Alleghri, who was sitting on Carew’s couch. Gina had already broken out the beers, and passed one across to him.

He looked at the engineer’s sling. “Where’s Jed?”

“He said he’d be right with me,” Lania said.

Carew looked through the viewscreen at the jungle, expecting at any second to see Flyers bearing down. “I’m getting jumpy, Lania. I want to get out of here.”

A minute later Jed appeared in the doorway, swaying. He still clutched his pulse-gun, like a kid with a teddy bear.

Carew stared at him. “Jed, you okay?”

A strange expression passed across the engineer’s face and something turned in Carew’s stomach.

“Oh, Christ, Jed.”

The engineer said, “I don’t know what’s happening, boss. A voice in my head... it’s telling me to do things. Wants me to kill you all, wants the ship.” His face contorted as he spoke, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Jed,” Carew said, “give me the gun.”

“It wants all our knowledge, boss. Wants the
Hawk
... And I have to kill you, kill the only family I’ve ever known.”

Jed raised the pulse-gun, and Carew tried to stand, but it was as if his legs had frozen solid.

Jed lifted the gun and fired. His head dissolved in an atomised spray of blood, bone and brain. Carew looked away, crying out, and heard the body slump to the deck.

Carew slipped into the engineer’s sling and Lania yelled, “I’m getting us out of here, Ed.”

The
Hawk
phased into the void.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
S THE
H
AWK
sped through void-space, Carew recounted to Commander Gorley what, in essence, Langley and Villic had told him about the Weird. He stressed the danger of the aliens and their parasites, and the fact that untold thousands of humans all across the Expansion were already infected. The only solution, as far as Carew could see, would be to declare the Devil’s Nebula off-limits to all but Expansion warships, and to combat the hordes of infected humans by using telepaths to probe the minds of those suspected of harbouring the alien parasites.

Gorley heard him out, here and there interjecting a question or requesting clarification on some point.

When Carew had finished, the rat-faced Expansion man regarded him impassively. “From an enemy of the state,” he said, “you have become its... benefactor.”

Carew smiled. “Who would have thought it?” he said.

“I’ll convene an extraordinary meeting of the Council on our return,” Gorley said, “and furnish them with the facts.”

Later Carew ejected the bodies of Jed, and the two militia-men killed earlier, into void-space, murmuring a helpless farewell to the engineer. He returned to the flight-deck.

“Would you like a beer?” Lania said.

“That’d be great.”

She fetched two ice-cold flasks and joined him on the couch. They drank in silence for a while, then Lania said, “You said, back on World... you said you’d tell me something. You said you’d be honest with me, but that then wasn’t the right time.”

He looked at Lania. They had, he reflected, been through a lot together over the past few days. She had told him about her father, her escape from Macarthur’s Landfall.

He nodded.

“I had a sister called Maria. She was just ten when the Vetch invaded Temeredes.”

“What happened?” Lania asked.

“My parents were killed in the first strike. They were working in the capital city – but we lived in the country. Maria and me... we were at school when the strike happened. We saw the city wiped out in the neutron strike. There were no survivors.”

Lania tipped back her beer. Carew took a long drink, recalling what happened next.

“Apparently, the Vetch had given the authorities two days to evacuate the planet, or else. But the authorities vacillated, called the Vetch’s bluff... and suffered the consequences. The second wave consisted of a Vetch invasion force, to mop up the survivors. They weren’t especially barbaric. They rounded up most of the men, women and children left alive and herded them to the spaceport for evacuation. But...” He stopped, took a mouthful of beer and stared through the viewscreen at the swirling grey void.

“Maria and me, we hid in the ruins for days, lying low. I can’t remember what we thought might happen – that the Vetch would just go away. Anyway, they didn’t. They stayed and combed the ruins and found us. I can see now that we should have simply given ourselves up, but...” He felt a terrible pain and guilt as he recalled the incident. “but I was twelve, and resentful of the aliens who had killed my parents, so I attacked a Vetch soldier with the only thing I had to hand, a stone – and he turned when it hit him and fired instinctively. The blast should have hit me. I deserved to die, not Maria.”

He paused, then went on, “But she was just behind me and she didn’t stand a chance. The Vetch could have killed me, I suppose – and for years afterwards I wished it had – but he just scooped me up and threw me kicking and screaming into a flyer and ferried me to the spaceport.”

He shrugged and looked down at Maatja. “So when Hahta begged me to find her sister,” he said, “how could I refuse?”

Lania reached out and touched his cheek. “You saved her life, Ed.”

She fetched another beer from the cooler, and they sat in silence, drank and stared through the viewscreen at the void.

A
DAY LATER
they phased into normal space, and Lania joined him before the viewscreen.

They stared out at the majestic expanse of the station, scintillating against the velvet backdrop of deep space. A dozen starships came and went, and Carew was surprised at how relieved he was to look upon an Expansion station.

Lania said, “Quite a sight, isn’t it, Ed?”

“Do you know something?” he said. “It feels like coming home.”

Lania returned to her sling and eased the
Hawk
into one of the many hangars that pocked the underside of the station. She cut the drives and silence settled over the ship.

They left the flight-desk, joined by Gina Alleghri, and cycled themselves through the air-lock.

A reception committee of six bulky guards awaited them. Gorley advanced, spoke in lowered tones to the guards, then marched off down the corridor without a further word.

Carew looked at Lania, frowning, and the leading guard gestured with his rifle for them to move.

They were taken to the very same room in which, before the mission, they had been held – and the significance was not lost on Carew.

Lania crossed to the bar and examined the cooler. “Hey, more beer. Remember how Jed drank himself senseless, Ed?”

Carew smiled at her.

Lania tossed a beer to Alleghri. The militia-woman said, “But what gives? I thought we were heroes?”

Carew moved to the screen and stared out. He thought through the events of the last day on World, the pitched battle in the interface chamber, and wondered if he’d got it wrong.

Later he said to Lania and Alleghri, “I’ve got an awful feeling about this.”

Lania looked up at him. “How come?”

He took a breath. “Okay, so what if Villic was wrong about Gorley? What if he is infected, but Villic didn’t detect the parasite?”

Lania shook her head. “But surely...?”