Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach (26 page)

You’re one lucky, ugly bastard, he thought.

He pulled his head in and rolled. “Close the hatch and phase out!” he screamed, and a second later the hatch slammed shut.

He felt the familiar lurching sensation in his gut as they phased into the void.

Across the chamber, Zeela was sitting against the wall, her face tear-streaked – and she was laughing like a maniac.

“Den!” she cried. “Den?”

Smiling, weary now but elated, he said, “Zeela?”

“I... I told you you’d be proud of me, didn’t I?”

He laughed. “You did. But...?”

She pulled something from the pocket of her one-piece and held it aloft.

“I didn’t break the vodka, Den!”

Laughing, he crawled across the floor and hugged her to him.

L
ATER, AS THEY
sped through the void towards Kallasta, they sat side by side in their slings and Harper sent a recorded message to Bjorn Halstead on Vassatta. They raised their glasses and Harper proposed a toast. “To Bjorn Halstead – hero of heroes!”

“To Bjorn!” Zeela said.

She took a mouthful of vodka and spat it halfway across the flight-deck.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“S
TOP FIRING
!”
THE
Vetch yelled.

His command was redundant, anyway, because seconds later Harper’s ship stuttered visually and phased into the void.

She stood on the ice, staring up at where the ship had been. Down in the canal the ice-liner raced north, the roar of its engines diminishing. Janaker holstered her laser and hugged herself against the biting wind. Despite her thermal suit, gloves, hood and goggles, she was freezing. Kreller stood beside her, dressed as he had been from the start in his leather jacket – lacerated thanks to the attention of Tesnolidek back on Amethyst Station – without gloves or protective headgear.

She raised her wrist-com and instructed her ship to pick them up. It gave an arrival time of thirty minutes and she wondered if she’d survive that long. She gestured to the building behind them and hurried into its shadow. At least here they were out of the wind.

She sat against the wall on her haunches, hugging herself. The Vetch squatted beside her.

She glanced at his chest, where days ago Tesnolidek had sliced him to the bone, and a few minutes back Harper had lasered him in the sternum. The Vetch seemed to be unbothered by the wound, despite the mess of singed hair and scorched flesh.

She pointed at the wound. “You okay?”

Kreller grunted. “I’ll live.”

She stared at him. “There’s something I don’t get.”

“What’s that?”

“Harper destroys an Ajantan ship, kills God knows how many aliens aboard it... and yet when it comes to firing at us, he sets his laser to stun.”

The Vetch turned his bloodhound gaze on her. “Have you thought that maybe his laser was set to kill – kill humans, that is? But I am a Vetch. I am... stronger.”

She snorted. “You’re made of the same stuff as I am, Kreller. You’re flesh and blood. Had his laser been set to kill, you’d be dead meat now.”

“In your dreams,” Kreller muttered.

Fuck you
, she thought. She shook her head. “It’s not the actions of a man who killed the last bounty hunter sent after him,” she said. “But that was four years ago. Perhaps he’s changed in that time?”

She looked around at the wind-swept desolation of the station. The wind keened like a soulful musical instrument. “Who the hell, in their right minds, would chose to live on a world like this?”

“Those born here, those who know nothing else.” He stared at her. “I am from a world like this one.”

“Well, that’d explain thing or two.”

“Meaning?”

She smiled, gesturing at his uncovered head. “Your tolerance to cold.”

“I am from the world of Zankra, born of a noble clan. I was destined to follow my mother into the military, but I showed an aptitude for the sciences. And then, while I was studying, I was singled out for the surgery that would bring forth my telepathic ability. That was before you were even born.”

She grunted. “And how long have you been tracking down Vetch infected with the Weird parasite?”

“We have known of the Weird for two of your years, so for just a little under that.”

“And how many of the infected have you...” she recalled the word he had used “... liquidated?”

“To date, three.”

“High-ups in the Vetchian hierarchy?”

“Two were scientists working in the arms industry, the other a Marshall in our space fleet.”

She nodded, thinking about the humans in the Expansion infected unbeknownst to themselves and their loved ones... For all her dislike of the Expansion authorities, the thought of anyone harbouring a Weird mind-parasite filled her with horror and pity.

She glanced at her wrist-com. Her ship should be here within minutes. “So, Kreller... You’ve dissected my psychology, derided my sexuality. What about you? Are you married, or doesn’t the term apply to the Vetch?”

He stared into the icy darkness. “We do not marry. We mate. We have a partner for months only, long enough for the female to conceive.”

“Ah, and after that the woman is left to rear the brood?”

He looked at her. “Child-rearing, in my culture, is the responsibility of the male of the species.”

Somehow, try as she might, she just could not imagine Kreller changing nappies.

She grunted, “And I’m sure you’d make a fine father, Kreller.” She squinted at him. “Are you? A father, that is?”

“My rank within my cadre prohibits patriarchy, at least for another ten of your years. After that, maybe I will settle down and raise a family for a couple of years.”

“A couple of years? And then your offspring will be old enough to fend for themselves?”

He nodded. “Unlike your feeble, puling pups which take many years to mature.”

“We’re all products of our biology and environment,” she said, “and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”

The Vetch grunted. “It is just that some races, Janaker, are superior compared to others.”

“I was about to ask you if you had any comparisons in mind, but look,” she pointed, “the ship.”

She stood up and walked from the lee of the building, the sudden wind slicing the exposed flesh of her cheeks and taking her breath away. She watched her ship come down, then hurried across the ice and up the ramp.

S
HE LAY BACK
in her couch and drained her fifth carton of beer.

She was at that pleasant stage of drunkenness that came just before maudlin introspection set in. The many mistakes of her past were forgotten in a pleasant haze of anaesthesia, along with the uncertainty of her future. All that remained was the present... and she was seated in her command couch surrounded by her ship, so the present was okay.

She even managed to push the irritation of Helsh Kreller to the back of her mind. He was alien, anyway, so what did he amount to? He wasn’t even a real man, so she couldn’t truly bring herself to hate him, for all that he was an insufferable, macho bastard. She would complete this mission, bring Harper kicking and screaming back to the Expansion, then find a resort somewhere and relax with a few weeks of beer and girls.

“The Ajantan ship?” Kreller’s shadow loomed over her – and just when she was enjoying a quiet drink.

She ripped open another carton and greeted him. “Why not try a beer? Go on. Never know, you might like it.”

He looked at her. “That is unlikely. I asked about the Ajantan ship.”

She waved at the screen. “Somewhere out there. But don’t worry, I told my ship to keep its distance.”

Kreller eased his bulk into the co-pilot’s couch. It creaked under his weight. “How far are we from Kallasta?”

“Just under a day.” She took a long swallow of beer, closed her eyes and lay back.

Seconds later her wrist-com buzzed and the ship informed her of an incoming communiqué.

She sat up. “From?”

Surely Harper wasn’t trying to contact her?

Her ship said the call was coming from the Ajantan vessel.

Kreller looked at her. “Open communications,” he snapped.

“I was just about to, for chrissake,” she muttered, and then said to her ship, “Okay, patch them through.”

The viewscreen flickered and the bridge of the Ajantan ship appeared, a gloomy aqueous chamber like something at the bottom of a frog pond. Which was appropriate, she thought, when she saw the three Ajantans facing her. The central alien spoke, a series of almost inaudible fluting sounds, and she instructed the ship to translate.

Seconds later a computerised female voice rendered the words intelligible.

“We respectfully enquire as to the reason you are following us?”

Janaker leaned forward. “We are
en route
to the world of Kallasta,” she said.

“You have been following us for the past three days.”

“Our route to Kallasta happened to follow your own route.”

“The coincidence is remarkable,” said the Ajantan. “We suspect that you too are following the ship carrying the human male and female.”

“Negative.” She paused, choosing her words with care. “But why are
you
following their ship?”

The three Ajantans conferred, and at last the central alien turned to face the screen. “The human male is in possession of our property.”

“In possession of
what
?”

“The human girl, who is our property.”

She opened her mouth to say something, stopped herself and sat back in the couch. “I understand,” she said at last, diplomatically. “And you intend to get back your... property.”

“Affirmative.”

“And the human male?”

“The human male is responsible for the destruction of an Ajantan ship. For this crime, he must pay the penalty.”

“Which is?”

The aliens stared at her. Together they said one word, “Death.”

“I understand.”

“And we hope,” said the central Ajantan, “that as a fellow human, you will have no argument with this.”

She glanced at Kreller and said, “We have no desire to interfere in the affairs of another... judicial system,” she finished.

“For that we are grateful, and farewell.”

The screen flickered and Janaker was once again staring out at the void.

She remembered the beer clutched in her hand, took a long drink, then said, “They consider the girl their
property
?”

“Who are we to question the cultural arrangements of an alien race?” Kreller said.

She stared at him. “What kind of lily-livered morality is that, you bastard? Even the Expansion has outlawed slavery... and who knows what the Ajantans want with the girl.”

“My main concern,” Kreller said, “is Harper and his ship. We cannot let the Ajantans capture him.”

“Well, at least we agree on that.”

He said, “We are armed, correct?”

“With enough firepower to take out the Ajantan ship and more to spare,” she said. “I feel like doing it now...” But that, she knew, was the beer talking.

Kreller gestured. “We will monitor the situation and assess our options,” he said. “We know that they want the girl, so they will not fire on the ship for fear of killing her.”

“Will you please tell me, Kreller, why you’re so obsessed with Harper’s damned ship?”

He stared at her. “Not now. When we have the ship, I will demonstrate.”

Before she could begin to ask him what he was talking about, he pushed himself from the couch and strode from the bridge.

Janaker stared into the void and chugged her beer.

Full speed ahead to Kallasta
, she thought.

S
HE CAME TO
her senses some time later and sat up, her head pounding. Kreller was in the co-pilot’s seat, intent on the console before him. She ran a hand through her hair and rubbed her face. A dozen beer cartons littered the floor at her feet. No wonder she felt as if something had exploded inside her head.

She looked at the viewscreen. Void-space swirled, but something was not quite right out there. Presumably they were approaching Kallasta, in which case the void should have showed as an orderly series of whorls designating the gravity well of a planetary body. But the grey swirls before her were knotted in a tight vortex normally seen spinning around the event horizon of a black hole.

“Kreller?” she said.

“There is an anomaly,” he reported.

“I can see that,” she snapped. “Kallasta, right?”

“Right, but there is something down there that is distorting the normal flow of the space-time continuum.”

He gave the command to phase from the void, and a minute later they were staring down on a placid green-blue world. Kreller tapped at the console.The scene jumped. She leaned forward and stared at an aerial mountain view of snow-capped peaks and verdant valleys. Nestled in the lap of a central vale was what she took at first to be a lake – but the water in the lake was not blue but an opaque, milky white.

“What the hell,” she said, “is that?”

The thing was perfectly circular and shimmered with its own internal light. She made out indistinct shapes far within its lambent depths, shapes which her brain was unable to decode.

“Kreller?” she said.

“The cause of the anomaly,” he murmured.

“Yes, but
what
is it?”

He turned to her. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I have never seen anything quite like it.”

“Where’s Harper and the Ajantan ship?”

“Approaching Kallasta,” he said.

“So... we follow them down, right?”

He looked at her. “Just so.”

She nodded, and decided she needed another beer.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“D
EN, WE’VE JUST
phased out and entered into orbit around Kallasta.”

Judi
’s soft voice woke him from a deep sleep. He dressed and stepped into the corridor. As he was passing Zeela’s cabin, he paused and listened. She was singing what sounded like a heart-felt lament in her own language. Her voice rose, lilting, and Harper admitted that it was beautiful. He hurried to the flight-deck.