The Rift Rider (7 page)

"Almost
there," Bei said through gritted teeth.

Charlie held his
breath. Five more seconds and they would be out of there.

"Shit,"
Bei screamed, as doors slid out of the docking bay wall, sealing the tunnel
shut. He slammed on the ship's front thrusters. The ship halted, its backend
lifting up at a ninety-degree angle as if it were bike whose speeding rider had
foolishly gripped the front breaks.

Charlie shot
forward, his restraints cutting into his bare chest and wounded arm.

Bei brought the
ship back down, and shouted, "Awani," into the control desk's
microphone.

"One step
ahead of you," came Awani's voice. A stream of energy bursts swiftly
followed her call. They tore past the ship and into the tunnel doors.

The exploding
rounds shook the ship violently, bouncing Charlie in his seat. But after ten
seconds of shooting, the tunnel remained sealed.

"Kid,"
Bei said. "It looks like Awani needs your help."

"Bursts or
grenade?"

"Grenade."

Charlie wrapped
his left hand around the gun stick and gave a short, hard squeeze. A fist-sized
sparking star shot out of the ship's nose and ploughed into the wall, exploding
in a burst of blinding white light. The shock wave flung the Bane flyer
backwards and only Bei's white-knuckled wrestling with the control levers kept
the ship from slamming into the docking bay floor.

  
When the light faded, torn metal
lay strewn all over the floor and a hole gaped in the bay wall.

"Good
shooting, kid," Bei said, and with a thrust of the levers, propelled the
ship through the hole.

They accelerated
up the tunnel, Bei no longer concerned about keeping his speed down. The tunnel
lights flashed by in a blur of blue and green, until finally Charlie saw the black
oval marking the end of the tunnel. Charlie gripped the control desk in front
of him. The Bane flyer shot out of the tunnel like a butterfly bullet bursting
out of its metal cocoon and into an ocean of darkness.

The destroyer's fired
its cannons at the fleeing ship. But somehow Bei swung and shimmied the Bane
Flyer between the energy streams. It was the finest display of elusive running
Charlie had seen since watching Jason Robinson shimmy his way through the
Australian defence for the British and Irish Lions in 2001.

"How long
can you keep this up?" Charlie asked, after Bei pulled off a twisting loop
that left the destroyer shooting at ghosts.

 
"Long enough," he said, running
one hand across the control desk and manipulating the levers with the other.
"We're almost at the Wrake Pass. They'll leave us alone then."

Bei was right.
The moment they crossed into the Pass the destroyer stopped its fire.

"Why did
they stop?" Charlie said.

"They're
happy to let the Wrake Pass finish us off for them," Awani said, coming
into the cockpit and taking a seat behind them. "Isn't that right?"

"Safest
place for us," Bei said.

"Safe!"
Awani shook her head.

"It's too
late to complain now. Besides, escaping into the Pass was always the plan,
wasn't it?"

Charlie remembered
Executive Ko telling him that they caught him aboard a ship heading towards
Wrake Pass. "What so dangerous about the Wrake Pass?"

 
Awani leant forward in her seat.
"Take a look at the navigation screens."

Charlie looked
at the data screens running down the sides of the cockpit display. They were
completely blank.

 
"Ships go in and don't come
out," she said. "Ever. Not unless they've got a robundee pathfinder
guiding the way." She theatrically looked around the cockpit. "And I
don't see one here. And they'd be pretty hard to miss, being seven feet tall
and red and all."

"You're wrong,"
Bei said. "The original turen immigrants made their way through the Pass.
That's how they found Poklawi and the robundee in the first place."

"Last I
heard, only two ships out of the thirty made it."

"Hey,"
Bei said. "Quit your moaning. You agreed to take this mission, same as me."

Awani crossed
her arms and huffed.

 
"All we need to do is float here a
while," Bei said. "Then, when the destroyer has travelled far enough
so that we're beyond the range of its tracking devices, we can fly out again.
Simple."

But nothing,
Charlie soon learned, was ever simple here. Just as they were settling into the
wait, Charlie's arm exploded in pain. He opened his mouth and let out a scream
of epic proportions.

"My . . .
arm." He forced the words out between screams. "The . . . drug . . .
worn . . . off."

He shut his
eyes, enveloped in a pain that eclipsed all senses and all thoughts. It made a
prisoner out of him, sealing him off from the outside world. All thoughts,
fears and hopes vanished in its embrace.

Whether a
minute, or an hour later, Charlie could not tell, but the pain gradually grew
weaker. Charlie unclenched his teeth, withdrew his fingernails from his palms
and opened his eyes.

He was strapped
to a table. Awani and Bei stared down at him, looks of concern written across
their colourful features.

"We had to
restrain you," Awani said. "You were screaming and flailing about
like a crazy person."

"I'm
sorry," Charlie said.

"Don't
be," Bei said. "You got shot saving us."

"We gave
you what painkillers we had left," Awani said. "But they're a lot
weaker than the Theran water."

"Where am
I?" Charlie asked, looking around the room.

"Under the
weapons room," Bei said. "In the rec pit."

"Look,
Karlee" Awani said. It was the first time she had said his name, and
despite mincing it, it pleased him. He thought she would go on calling him
Passenger forever.

 
"I need to operate on you, right
now," she said.

Charlie looked
down at the hole in his arm, then back at Awani. "Okay."

"I've got
to get back to the cockpit, " Bei said, placing a hand on Charlie's
shoulder. "Who knows what might run into us out here?" He climbed up
the short ladder leading out of the rec pit. He lifted a hatch in the ceiling,
paused, stared down at them and said, "Good luck," before climbing
out. Charlie was not sure if Bei meant it for Awani or for him.

Awani reached
down, picked up a dark oblong object from beneath the table, and placed it on
Charlie's chest. It looked like an old leather rugby ball with a hole carved in
its middle. It radiated warmth.

 
Awani tapped out a short sequence onto
its surface, and it stirred into life. Once activated, the object emitted a
pleasant hum and began vibrating softly.

 
Charlie raised his head and looked down
his nose. The whole top half of the oval flickered with information. He tried
to read it. He made out the words, cut, arm, insert and roam, before a wave of
nausea rocked him and he had to put his head down.

"Don't
worry," Awani said. "I've used the medbot plenty of times."

"I trust
you," Charlie said, realising as soon as he said it that he meant it.

"Good,"
she said. "Now, I suggest you keep your head down as the next bit's going
to be messy."

Charlie rested
his head against the table. Directly above him, a flat, metal handle protruded
from the rec pit ceiling. In it Charlie could see a twisted, blurred reflection
of himself, Awani and the medbot. It'll have to do, thought Charlie. Despite
being a touch squeamish, he wanted to see exactly what this medical rugby ball was
going to do to him.

Charlie felt a
tremble on his chest, and then from out of the medbot four moist tentacles
emerged. They began crawling along Charlie's body.

Like a
centipede, each had dozens of pairs of tiny legs. They tickled Charlie as they
moved towards the hole in his arm. They took positions at four opposite ends of
the wound. Once positioned, the tentacles shivered, and sprouted clawed grippers.
They snapped their new appendages in the air, as if communicating in some crab
language. And then they plunged into Charlie's wound.

He screamed, and
fought against his restraints. But he had been secured tightly. Awani laid a
cool palm across his brow. "Calm down Karlee. The pain will fade. I
promise."

Charlie looked
up into her beautiful pink face. Her eyes sparkled at him.

He tried to
smile, but a fresh stab of pain twisted it into a grimace.

The tentacles
writhed about inside his arm, tearing, tugging and pulling at him. He looked
past Awani and up at the reflection. His arm looked alive. Blood and slime
flowed from his wound, spreading across the table and soaking into his wetsuit
bottoms.

Awani stroked
his head. "The tentacles are releasing an anaesthetic. It'll just hurt for
a few more moments."

The pain subsided.
Soon Charlie's arm was as numb as it had been after the Theran water. The
tentacles, Awani had informed him, released a strong anaesthetic as they
worked. It flowed up from his arm, bringing a warm tranquillity to other parts
of his body.

He yawned. His
eyelids felt like manhole covers. But he fought the urge to close them. He
wanted to see what was happening to his arm.

Awani stared
into his eyes, and smiled. "Don't fight it. You can't win."

She's so lovely,
Charlie thought. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

"What do
you mean he escaped?" Doctor's Sree's voice, shrill and wild, echoed
around the laboratory.

Executive Ko
stepped forward, her hand raised, ready to slap the scientist. Her jaw
shuddered as it always did before an attack. "How dare you raise your
voice to Chief Lade, you little - "

"Executive,
please," the Chief Technology Officer said. The authority in his voice
brought the silver woman's hand down. But she continued to glare at the
scientist, her green eyes smouldering.

Chief Lade
turned to the scientist. His mouth smiled but not his eyes. Despite his many
years, the man's silver skin had kept its bright complexion, and his hair
remained glossy brown. He stood with a back as straight as a ruler.

 
Doctor Sree wondered what secret
experiments the Chief Lade had had his team carry out to keep him so fresh.

"Remember
your place, Doctor Sree," the chief said. "Your usefulness has
granted you certain privileges, but that doesn’t include the permission to
insult superiors."

By superiors you
mean silvers, the Doctor Sree thought. To Lade, speaking with as much
difference as he could muster, he said, "I'm sorry, Sir. It's only the prisoner's
escape came as most unpleasant surprise. I'm afraid it represents a huge missed
opportunity for all of us."

Chief Lade
locked his predator's eyes on to the scientist. "Why exactly did you call
us down here? I assumed it was something to do with the rift engine
project."

The scientist
motioned for the two silvers to follow him to a display hanging at the far end
of his lab. In a calm, professional voice he said, "Before his
interrogation, the prisoner was subjected to a brief medical inspection to
determine whether he carried any viruses that could spread to the crew, the
usual blood and tissue samples. The results showed him to be a disease free turen
male, approximately twenty years of age."

Chief Lade
looked at him blankly. Executive Ko shook her head, and said, "You're
wasting our time doctor."

"However,"
the scientist went on, "after I saw the prisoner, I felt the need to
conduct some of my own tests. His outlandish story, together with his peculiar
blend of silver and regular features, piqued my curiosity. There was something
not quite right about him. And it seemed I was right. Through DNA analysis of
the samples I discovered his genetic make-up to be subtly different to our own.
He looks like us and talks like us but he is not one of us."

The scientist
paused and fixed the Chief in his stare, satisfied that he had discovered
something his silver overlords had overlooked.

"Sir, his
story was no cover story. It was the truth. He really did come here from
another world. He had the secrets to intergalactic travel locked inside him. And
we had him." Doctor Sree exhaled. "And now we've lost him."

The beagle
stopped in front of a large oak door and barked three times. The great slab of
wood creaked open and the dog padded through, his short tail swinging. Charlie
followed.

The door slammed
closed behind him, locking them both inside a large, softly lit study.
Bookshelves covered the room from floor to ceiling. Charlie inhaled and the
scent of a thousand books filled his nostrils, each with its own distinct
flavour. He smelt mosquito repellent, boiled mushrooms, the hoppy smell of
Indian Pale Ale and even Lynx Jade, his choice deodorant as a spotty teenager.

 
The dog barked once more and took a seat
behind a large desk, cut from the same tree as the door. It scratched an ear,
and raised its snout towards the seat opposite it.

Charlie sat
down.

The beagle
looked back at him over the desk. "Welcome back. Are you ready to hear the
rest of the message?"

"Yes,"
Charlie said, "though you can change to your true form now. I know who you
are, Brother Yojim."

The dog said,
smiling, "Very well."

The change
happened in an instant. One moment Charlie was looking down at the drooping
ears, and deep black eyes of a dog and the next he was staring into the
tattooed chest of a heavily muscled, red alien.

Charlie raised
his eyes to take in the demonic face studying him. "How did I get
here?"

"I
understand you have many questions, Charlie. However, I'm afraid you will have
to be patient."

"For crying
out loud, just tell me. I want to know." If this really is just a memory,
Charlie thought, then he can't hurt me. I can be as rude as I damn well like.

"I'm afraid
that's not possible right now."

"What?
Look. I've been tortured, molested, shot, and cut open. I deserve to know what
brought me here."

Brother Yojim's
eyes deepened. "That question is for another day. When I implanted this
message into your mind we were under attack. I only had time to insert enough
information to help you survive if the Corporation caught you. If you're
hearing it now, then that's what happened."

"No
shit," Charlie said.

"If I
avoided capture, then right now I'm on my way to Jajag city. With help from the
resistance I will try and rescue you once you land on Seenthee. But I can make no
guarantees of success. Very few have been freed from the Corporation. If you're
presented with a chance to escape, take it."

Brother Yojim
leant his elbows on the desk and bridged his large hands together. Over the top
of them, he said, "Originally I had planned to take you to Poklawi, and
from there, send you home. But as I was summoning a roller to take us through
the Wrake Pass, a patrol of shadow fighters intercepted us.

"We had no
choice but to escape. So I inserted this message inside you, loaded you into an
evac pod and then climbed into one myself, setting a course for Seenthee. The
plan was to land simultaneously on the same landing strip hidden in the Thorak
mountain range. From there we would seek voyage to Poklawi with a resistance
shuttle.

"To throw
the shadow fighters off our scent, I jettisoned the ships remaining two pods,
setting their course for Jajag city. But if you're hearing this my plan failed,
and for that I am deeply sorry."

Something
puzzled Charlie. Why does he want to send me home after bringing me here? he thought

"I didn't
bring you here," Brother Yojim said.

Charlie opened
his mouth, about to ask how he had read his thoughts, but the robundee spoke
first. "This is all in your mind, remember. I'm just a message
implant."

"So if you
didn't bring me over, who did?"

"That's not
included in the message."

Charlie sighed.
"What is in the message, then?"

"All that
remains is for me to tell you that you are in possession of certain abilities
you may or may not have realised by now."

"You mean
being able to understand and speak alien languages?"

The red man
nodded.

"I thought
it was weird that everyone spoke to me in English," Charlie said.

"While you
were on board I implanted a language learner into your brain. It is versed in
all turen and robundee languages. It works in harmony with the linguistic
centre of your brain to interpret these languages. Initially, to avoid confusion
when you speak, you will believe you're speaking your own tongue. However, you
are in fact speaking whatever language you are responding to. It works the same
way with reading and writing. In time, though, you will know which language you
are producing and be able to switch between them at your own free will."

Impressive,
thought Charlie. I wish I had that when I was doing GCSE French.

"In
addition," the robundee, "you may have noticed that you can breathe
as easily as on your own planet and have not experienced any problems with
gravity. This is despite the high probability of these conditions being
different here than on your planet."

"Is that
because of another implant?"

"No,"
Bei said. "The ability to adapt to various worlds was already within
you."

"What?"
Charlie said. "That's impossible."

"I'm afraid
that's the end of the message." And with that the robundee began to fade.

"Don't
go," Charlie said, rising from his seat.

The ghost like
form of the robundee, smiled down at him. "Come and find me. I'll be
waiting."

"Please. I
need to know," Charlie said. "Why are you helping me?"

But the robundee
had already vanished.

Charlie woke up.
He was still lying on top of the metal operating table. A thin sheet covered
him. He swung his legs round and got off the table. The floor felt cold beneath
his feet. He raised his arms above his head and stretched. As he did, the sheet
slipped off him and fell to the floor. To his horror, he saw that someone had
removed his wetsuit bottoms and he was standing stark bollock naked in the
centre of the room.

He rushed for
the sheet, grabbed it and pulled it up over his crotch. Once he had it securely
wrapped, sarong like, around him, he scanned the room for watching eyes. Nobody
had seen him. He sighed with relief. But then it dawned on him that one of them
must have seen him naked anyway, as they had stripped him in the first place.
He wondered whether it had been Bei or Awani and silently cursed the ship's
chilled interior.

Awani was asleep
in a bunk built into one of the rec pit walls but Bei was nowhere to be seen.
He must be keeping an eye on things in the cockpit, Charlie thought.

 
He looked at the sleeping woman. She had
pulled her sheet up to her chin, and lay on her side facing the wall. All he
could see was her hair. It had somehow changed colour and grown while he had
been asleep. It flowed over her sleeping form like a metallic blue blanket.

A cushioned
bench protruded from the wall beneath Awani's bunk. Charlie sat down on it,
yawned, stretched his legs out before him and leaned back. He inspected his
wounded arm. The hole had gone. In its place a fleshy red circle the size of a
cricket ball glistened like an uncooked chicken breast. Charlie ran a finger
across it. It was smooth and springy.

He lifted his
arm up and down a few times. Then he tensed his arm as tight as he could. His
bicep bulged pleasantly. There was no pain. It felt as good as new. These
aliens sure know how to put someone back together, he thought.

Then he remembered
his nose. He still had not had a decent look at it. Warily, he approached the
reflective surface of the operating table. Miraculously twelve year's of competitive
rugby had not left him a nose resembling a gardening tool. He would be gutted
if he had ruined it, especially since he was now single. He glanced at Awani.
Single and travelling with a hotty, he thought.

He leaned over
the table. The curved metal surface distorted his reflection, twisting his face
into a hideous mask. He snapped his head backwards, suppressing a scream with a
closed hand.

Wait, he
thought. It's just the table, you idiot.

He leaned over
it once more, this time searching the surface for a section that made him look
human. After some scanning, he found a spot. Green eyes stared back at him,
beaming out from above a perfectly angular beak. "Yes," he said,
punching the air.

"I see
you're up then." It was Awani.

Charlie shot back
from the table, banging his head against the side of her bunk.

"Ouch,"
he said, rubbing his head, and turning away slightly so that she could not see
the blood rushing to his face. She had caught him admiring his own reflection.
How embarrassing, he thought. She must take me for a right vain bastard.

"Sorry, I
didn't mean to startle you."

He smiled and
raised a hand in greeting. "Hey." He had tried to sound as casual as
he could, but the greeting came out about as smooth and laid back as a mouse's
squeak.

Awani smiled, pulled
her blanket aside and dropped to the floor beside him. She wore a loose fitting
shirt, bunched up in the middle to reveal a generous helping of cleavage and a
washboard stomach, and shorts that started three inches below her navel and
ended barely a hand's length later. Sleek blue hair flowed down to the tops of
her shorts, contrasting sharply with her bright pink skin.

Charlie gulped.
With significant effort he pulled his eyes back into his head, and fixed them
on the empty space beside her left ear. It was the safest place for them.

"What
happened to your hair?" He asked. It was a simple five-word question, but
it had taken every ounce of his concentration to string it together.

Awani laughed.
It was the first time he had heard her laugh and it was a beautiful thing.

"Nothing,"
she said. "I just took off that ridiculous wig."

"I
see."

A long, awkward
silence passed, before Awani said, "You're looking good."

"Oh, yes?"
Charlie said, inflating with pleasure.

"Yes,"
she said pointing to Charlie's arm. "It looks healed."

"Oh, my
arm," Charlie said, deflating.

"How does
it feel?"

 
"Great. You were great too. I mean,
when you operated on me."

"Well, it
was more the medbot than me."

"No,"
he said. "Seriously. I owe you my life."

She smiled, her
sky blue eyes dancing mischievously. "Then, I look forward to calling in
that debt."

This new
friendliness towards him, both puzzled and thrilled him. He took a chance.
"You're a lot friendlier than before."

"I'm sorry
about that. When I'm on mission, I can be a bit of a bitch." She paused. "And
to be honest when I first met you, I thought you would be a weak link. But
after the grenade I changed my mind. And then when I undressed you on the
table, I realised you might have your . . . " She stopped again, this time
giving him a smile and a look that sent shivers through him, and said, "uses.
"

Charlie
swallowed, his knees weakening beneath him. Is she coming on to me? he thought.
Quick, think of a something slick to say.

Half a minute
later, Charlie was still struggling to come up with a Han Solo-esque remark,
when the rec pit alarms sounded.

"Trouble,"
Awani said, and strode towards the ladder. Charlie, still wrapped in his bed
sheet, followed her up out of the rec pit, vowing to be a smoother bastard next
time.

"We've got
company," Bei said, as they stepped into the cockpit.

The bank of
screens showed a giant wall of energy circling the ship. It rippled and rolled,
turning in on itself like a giant wave. Its colours were in constant flux, one
moment shimmering gold and the next blazing bright purple.

"What is
it?" Charlie asked. "Some kind of weapon?"

Bei turned.
"That my friend is a roller. And unless you've got a miracle up your
sleeve, it's about to send us to the arsehole of the Universe."

"What's a
roller?" Charlie asked, his eyes on the light show taking place outside.

Bei moaned.
"Didn't they leave anything behind when they blanked your memory?"

Charlie
shrugged. "Just the Brother Yojim and Jajag City. Like I told you."

Bei shook his
head. "Clue him in, will you Awani?"

She sighed and
speaking at rapid pace, said, "Rollers are energy-based creatures. They've
been around for a very long time, longer some say than the Universe itself.
They come from another platform of existence, another dimension, if you like.
To our knowledge, the only parts of our dimension they inhabit are the Wrake
Pass and the Fire Forests of Poklawi. That's where the boundary separating our
dimension from theirs is weakest. So they can cross back and forth freely.

"Nobody
knows why they come to the Wrake Pass, but they have an unpleasant tendency to
disappear with any ships they come into contact with. And there's nothing we
can do to stop them. They're totally immune to our weapons.

"The only
ones who can control them are the robundee pathfinders. Ever since Poklawi's
creation, the beasts have crossed over to breed in its many fire forests. To
survive the robundee have had to learn to get along with them.

"Nobody
knows how long ago, but at some point in their history those red giants
developed a means of communicating with the rollers. It's not easy though, and
barely more than a dozen robundee a generation can do to it. They call
themselves the Kumari order, but we call them the pathfinders.

"Ever since
the first batch of turen fled the Corporation, and made it to Poklawi, the
pathfinders have been helping resistance ships cross the Pass. They summon the
rollers and use them to guide their ships across it. If it wasn't for the
pathfinders, the resistance would be dead and buried."