The Xenocide Mission Page 21

  ‘It didn’t, My Mother.’ First Son studied his display. ‘The satellites report that it pulled out at latitude forty-five degrees, then turned south.’

  ‘It must have crashed! Or burned up. No ship could—’

  ‘It then flew at hypersonic speed to the equator where it came to rest,’ First Son said. ‘It’s true, My Mother.’

  The secret that was the Dead World’s defence system was nothing compared to the secret that was this remarkable ship. No wonder Barabadar wanted it back. Was it some kind of prototype? Had foreign agents stolen it? Was Barabadar stealing it? The nation that had a ship like this would be unbeatable in space. Barabadar’s Space Presence had to have it.

  ‘Display its last known position,’ Jajing said, and the gold speck appeared on – sure enough – the equator.

  ‘Shall I signal My Martial Mother Barabadar that the ship is intact, My Mother?’ First Son said.

  Jajing thought. Barabadar was still out at Firegod, several light hours away. Whatever data they sent, Barabadar would not receive it for hours. Why send an incomplete interim report when, just a little bit later, they could send a complete one?

  ‘Not yet,’ Jajing said. She checked the fuel displays. ‘Third Son, calculate the fuel penalty involved in changing our orbit so that we pass over the ship.’ A complete report included a visual inspection.

  ‘Yes, My Mother.’

  ‘My Mother?’ Jajing looked up in surprise at First Son’s tone, a mixture of caution and annoyance. ‘That will take us out of My Martial Mother’s designated corridor,’ he said. ‘We were not to approach the planet closer than—’

  ‘We will report,’ Jajing said patiently. ‘We will report everything we are to find out.’

  ‘But the orders assumed the ship’s destruction, so there’d be no question of our leaving the corridor. If My Martial Mother had wanted us to leave the corridor and report on an intact ship, she would have—’

  ‘The orders, the approach corridor and the instructions plainly related to the satellites, and they’ve been shut down,’ Jajing said, with ever-decreasing patience. ‘I know what Our Martial Mother the Marshal of Space intended!’

  ‘Yes, My Mother,’ First Son said, but he didn’t seem convinced.

  It took half an hour for Chariot to change its orbital attitude, its crew strapped into their acceleration couches, but again Jajing was pleased with the smooth efficiency of her sons. She wondered whose performance she could most embellish in the log, without making her intentions too obvious – any one of them would make a good mate to the daughter of another family. First Son traditionally was the favoured prospect, of course, but he had already mated twice, and . . .

  She should get on with running the ship. ‘Second Son, stand by on the telescope,’ she said. ‘Try and get as much as you can on the first pass; save us having to go round again. You won’t get anything visual through those clouds; use infra red and radar.’

  ‘Yes, My Mother.’

  Jajing glanced across at First Son and was puzzled for a moment by what she saw on his display. It looked like some kind of power readout.

  ‘What are you doing, First Son?’ she said.

  First Son looked up and tried not to appear guilty. ‘I was scanning the satellites for power surges,’ the irritating runt said. ‘Just in case . . .’

  ‘In case what?’ Jajing demanded. She sensed the first surge of battle pheromones from the traitor and battle hormones rushed into her own system.

  ‘In case the orders were—’

  ‘I have explained the orders!’ Jajing shouted, barely hanging onto her maternal restraint. Then even that was gone and all she knew was challenge. This was an intruder, not even a female but a scrappy male, impinging on her territory. Her claws extended from her left fighting hand and she raked the side of his head. ‘Obey!’

  And then the male was out of his couch and hurtling towards her, flying impossibly through the air rather than bounding along the ground. Jajing raked his flanks with both sets of claws as he flew past her. Howls of rage filled the cave and to her surprise she saw that there were two other males, claws out, fangs bared. She tore at the annoying straps that held her down and then she was out and floating in the air with them. One of them grabbed her leg and sank his teeth in. Jajing yowled, and her talons tore off half his face.

  The fighting went on for a few more minutes. Controlling the ship was the last thing on what was left of any of their minds.

  Chariot of Rightful Justice began to tumble.

  The fireball broke through the cloud cover and a few seconds later the distant boom reached Joel’s ears. He stood in the doorway that overlooked the dim, barren plaza and squinted up. A streak of light seared across the heavy backdrop of the overhanging clouds and then was gone. A dim rumble reached his ears a moment later.

  ‘What was that?’ Boon Round looked up from his corner of the room.

  ‘Looked like a meteorite. A big one.’ Joel found himself almost wishing it had come right down on top of him, Boon Round, those bastard XCs and the sodding locals holding them captive. It would be a quicker and better death than the one that awaited them.

  Unlike their captivity on SkySpy, food wasn’t a problem. But Joel knew about radiation poisoning. Maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t. Perhaps he was just imagining the symptoms; increasing nausea, hair and teeth falling out, cancers blossoming in a variety of interesting ways in essential organs.

  He certainly wasn’t imagining the hallucinations – a meaningless montage of scenes from his life, even things he had long forgotten as a small boy – and the headaches that accompanied them. Often his father or Donna would appear, though more usually the scenes were recent, since he had come to SkySpy. Meanwhile spears of burning white light would burn through his brain, sometimes coaxing out the most amazingly obscure memories. His life was literally flashing before his eyes. It was like someone was rummaging through his head, dredging up all kinds of stuff at random. Joel wished them luck in making sense of it.

  All the anti-radiation treatment they could need, smart drugs that would seek out and repair the damaged cells and DNA within their bodies, was not far away in the lifeboat. But he had been brought here unconscious, to wake up with a splitting headache and an anxious Boon Round gazing into his eyes, and he had no idea where the lifeboat was. He had very little memory of the events leading up to the moment when, according to Boon Round, the big female had clobbered him. He had no memory at all of the clobbering.

  It was a strange sort of captivity, here in this empty house overlooking a stone plaza. Food and water were provided once a day; the water in a jar carried by a local, the food by other means. There was no door, nothing to keep them in; but if he or Boon Round stepped out, within seconds a couple of weapon-bearing locals would appear from somewhere. Making a break for it wasn’t an option.

  The locals had taken his aide but left Boon Round his translator unit. Joel assumed they had been guided by the XCs as to how to proceed, based on what the XCs themselves had seen and heard. Joel could use his aide to get at the lifeboat; all Boon Round’s translator unit was good for was talking to the Rustie, and that was becoming less and less fun as the days passed. The translator unit should have been able to contact the aide but Boon Round had had no joy when he tried. Both aide and translator unit were built for a society that was covered by an ever-present electromagnetic blanket; they didn’t need a vast range because wherever you went, there would always be something nearby to pass on the message, even route it up to a satellite if needed. Here there was nothing. It was the Commonwealth’s technological reliance against the electromagnetic silence of the Dead World, and the Dead World won.

  Joel leaned against the doorpost and gazed gloomily out at the plaza. One corner was cut off by an open stream flowing through a stone gutter, and the water steamed gently. Joel remembered the evidence of volcanism that he had seen from the lifeboat; this was what kept these people alive.

  Otherwise, t
he plaza was very like the one that the lifeboat had landed in. Same dark stone, same manic architecture. Occasionally he would see some of the locals. They usually scuttled by quickly, trying to keep out of the wind as much as possible as they went about their business. The exception was the processions.

  The locals did a lot of proceeding, though it wasn’t exactly carnival time. A parade would shamble through the square. They would enter and leave by any of the square’s four main entrances, eyes on the ground, absorbed in what they were doing but clearly taking their time. Sometimes they would be in single file, sometimes double; sometimes there would only be a handful of them, sometimes so many it would take a couple of minutes for the procession to pass by. No doubt it made sense to them.

  If it weren’t for the dark stone and the squashed lines of the buildings then the whole scene would have been attractive in, say, a Mediterranean setting on Earth, or down the coast from the Admiralty back on the Roving. Here on this cold, barren planet in the depths of a nuclear winter, it was even more bleak and dreary than it ought to be.

  He reached for his ident bracelet for the umpteenth time; his one, slightly desperate source of consolation. Sometimes, just seeing Donna’s face would fill the gut-wrenching emptiness inside him and renew his determination to stay alive and see her again. Sometimes, it just made him think of his chances of actually doing so and would depress him still further. You never could tell until the picture was actually activated. He wondered what it would be this time.

  But then a movement caught his eye and he watched the small party approach purposefully from the far corner.

  ‘Food party,’ he said. ‘It’s the little one.’

  He knew the routine by now. He stood back from the door as the small group came near. The usual mix; four of the Dead World locals, scuttling on their four legs, with spears clutched in their two arms and swords strapped at what could reasonably be called their waists. Another local would be with them, unarmed; and then the only variable, one or the other of the XCs, bearing a pile of food concentrates from the lifeboat which had been formulated to be edible by both humans and Rusties. This time it was the small male.

  The XC came up to the door, threw the food in without ceremony and turned away. Joel noticed yet more scars and slashes on its head and body, even tearing through its spacesuit, and he wondered what exactly the locals were doing to the XC prisoners. And when they were going to start on Boon Round and himself.

  ‘Concentrates,’ he said as he picked the pile up and dusted everything down. ‘Gee, you shouldn’t have.’

  It made a change from chocolate. It was a balanced diet, for one thing. A very boring diet, but still balanced. You could only grow healthy on the stuff, if the radiation didn’t kill you.

  It was lucky the XCs had overheard him ordering food from the foodfac. XCs conversed through tympanic membranes and they could probably imitate any sound they chose, and now they would just deliver the command verbally to the equipment on the lifeboat. Another verbal command they must have overheard was ‘field off’, and Joel bitterly regretted that he hadn’t used the controls for that particular one. They could never have got him off the lifeboat otherwise.

  He hadn’t used voice interface to get the antirad pills; he had pressed a button, and the XCs hadn’t even been in the cabin at the time. So they had no idea how to get them; they probably had no idea of the need.

  Boon Round came forward and picked up a food slab. ‘What do you think the XCs eat?’ he said.

  Joel shrugged and took a savage bite out of a slab of his own. His head sometimes still throbbed from the female XC’s knock-out blow. He was possibly concussed and probably dying of radiation poisoning. And he knew who had got him into this.

  ‘Whatever I’m doing that makes you think I care,’ he said, ‘tell me what it is and I’ll stop.’

  Oomoing knew the procedure and she drew back from the grill as the party approached. It swung open and the locals held their spears poised, like a bizarre honour guard, as Fleet walked in. He stood in the middle of the small room and the grill shut behind him. Oomoing jumped forward to catch him as he buckled.

  She laid him down gently. There was nothing that could be used as a bed or a mattress, one part of the floor was pretty much like any other, and so she just put him down where he was.

  ‘Fleet?’ she said. She peered into his eyes, waiting for the return of intelligence.

  ‘Learned Mother.’ When it came the tone was weak, the membranes barely vibrating. ‘It gets worse every time.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. The enemy didn’t alternate them on these occasions, or pick the one who was nearest the door, or apparently use any kind of pattern. Sometimes it was Fleet, sometimes herself, and that was all she knew.

  But she knew the feeling of helplessness, the creeping paralysis, the way that every part of your mind screamed defiance and swore that this time it would be different . . . but it never was. And then you would come to lying on the floor of the cell, and you would remember everything you had done, as if from a great distance, like watching a stranger in your own body.

  The worst times were when they both woke up on the cell floor. Then they didn’t need to remember because the cuts and the bruises and the bite marks and the slashes were testimony enough. But mostly it was just a food-gathering trip for the extraterrestrials.

  Much to her surprise, she and Fleet could both eat the scraps that the enemy gave them.

  Something else Oomoing remembered very clearly was arriving on this world. The shock of discovering that there was life here; and not just the primitive organisms that might have been expected but an entire culture, which surely no-one had ever suspected. It had hurt, to discover new life and then seconds later to have to fight it, but there had been no question about the hostility, and she and Fleet needed Long and Short alive. It had hurt, but it had at least been a decision they could make as rational beings.

  Unlike the bitterest of those long-distance memories, which was clouting Long around the head, and then going back to help Fleet subdue Short, who didn’t seem so susceptible to blows to the brain box. And then they had let the enemy on board and meekly walked with them to this place, deep within the city.

  She wondered if forgiveness was a concept that featured large in extraterrestrial society. She hoped someone could forgive her because she wasn’t sure she could herself.

  Seventeen

  Day Eighteen: 20 June 2153

  ’Hello,’ Joel said. ‘Visitors.’ And it wasn’t even feeding time.

  He straightened up from his usual position in the doorway as the locals approached across the bleak paving of the square. An armed party of four, and one in the middle, unarmed. They scuttled towards him on four legs, like the rest of their kind, but there was a purposefulness to it that suddenly made him nervous. Was this the long-awaited execution? Was this finally, It? His heart began to pound.

  But the group just came to an abrupt halt. The unarmed one stared at Joel, so Joel stared back. It came forward.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Joel said. His heart was slowing down, he was breathing more easily but he felt the tell-tale tickling at the back of his eyes. One of his headaches was coming on again.

  But then he blinked, because the desolation outside in the square suddenly faded away. The ruins took on shape. The stark buildings suddenly seemed light and inviting. The battered, hustling survivors became healthy, well dressed citizens; still locals but no longer alien. Friendly, familiar; Us. And instead of millions of tons of rubble swirling about in the atmosphere, there was a clear dark blue sky and a sun that shone brightly down.

  And he could feel it. The light was warm on his upturned face. The air was crisp and clear in his lungs, no longer charred and burnt but new and fresh. But it was more than that. He could feel, he could sense the community, the health, the goodness of the gathering. This was a happy place. A well-to-do place. A community of units that lived in harmony with itself.

  A procession was passing
through the square, and now Joel saw it for what it was. It was clearly the begetter of the occasional shuffle that Joel had witnessed, but it was grander and much more purposeful. Still a curiously low-key parade, heads held low, the sense of obedient duty strong in their movements; but there was joy and satisfaction because this procession was what life was about. A sacred duty. The walkers filed silently through the square, one side to the other, then out again.

  Joel was just getting into the vision when the pain struck.

  It was the headache again; the headache he had been getting ever since they landed on the Dead World. Sometimes it was like a handful of grit rubbing together behind his eyes. Sometimes . . .

  Joel screamed. He only dimly knew that he was curled up on the floor, hands clutching at his head, face buried in his knees. Grit? This was huge grinding slabs of stone, crushing his optic nerves, sending sparks of agony deep into his mind.

  Then it was over and he was lying on the floor in his curled-up position. Boon Round was crouching next to him, supporting Joel’s head in his forehands.

  ‘Another headache?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ Joel gasped.

  ‘Are you better?’

  ‘All the more for your asking,’ Joel muttered. For a glorious moment he thought the pain had vanished, but no. It was back to a twinge, but it was still there. He had to move his head very carefully as he pulled himself up and glanced up at the locals through the doorway. The plaza was back to its old, desolate self.

  • (It was not always) this way.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Is that meant to be some consolation?’

  ‘Consolation for what?’ said Boon Round.

  • (You saw) how (it was).

  ‘How do you know what I saw?’

  ‘I don’t. Are you sure you’re better?’

  Joel gazed at Boon Round; Boon Round gazed blankly back at him. ‘I saw the city,’ Joel said. ‘I saw how it used to be. How did you know?’

  ‘I have no idea what you—’

  • (We have established) contact. Good.