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Mech 4: The Black Ship (Imperium Series Book 5) Page 3


  “Yes,” Bolivar said. “We are from the original colony ship. This single settlement is the only one that survived.”

  Gersen smiled at him thinly. He had decided it was best to humor Bolivar. “All right, Captain. Were you on the original colony ship yourself?”

  Bolivar chuckled. “What? Do you think me mad? I’m talking about my mother’s father. And I’m not a captain, either. I’m a warden, nothing more. But I’m the only survivor from an officer’s family.”

  He produced his silver whistle and eyed it wistfully. “They blew this on Old Earth as the throngs were pressed aboard. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Gersen said, standing suddenly. “But I’m afraid I have to be leaving now.”

  “Don’t you wish to know the rest of the tale?”

  Gersen hesitated. He was fairly sure that he didn’t. But he thought of Estelle, and the excellent food he’d been given. The skies were darkening outside, and the plants would be no less irritable than they had been the night before. “What more can you tell me?” he asked, sitting down again.

  “How we survived, when all else died before us?”

  Gersen nodded and gestured for Bolivar to continue.

  “It was simple enough, really,” said the old man, looking pleased to have a captive listener. “We did not truly understand this place at first, this deadly planet. The fact that the plants here have primitive minds and motive power, that they are more akin to starfish back home than they are to true plants. That they are not truly flora or fauna, but rather something in-between.”

  “They are mindless, yet they move.”

  “Yes! That is because they have ganglia, you see. They are like small insects or other simple creatures. Like a man with a spinal cord, but no brain. They live, and respond to stimuli in a predictable fashion.”

  “So, somehow your relatives figured this out and came up with a way to survive?”

  “They built this fortress, for that is what it is, and they devised a set of rules which all who live here must follow. Can you show me the contents of your pack?”

  Gersen hesitated.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bolivar said. “It was scanned as you came in. You possess plant materials.”

  “They are sterile, and were harvested when it was safe to do so. The pods will never know, and won’t seek revenge.”

  Bolivar nodded. “Clearly, you speak the truth, or you would not have survived this long. But it does not matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You see, you have broken our rules. We cannot welcome you here, although it pains me to say it. Our rules have kept this colony alive when all else failed for many, many years. At some point, the people will learn of your countless crimes—the harvesting of pods. These are things we never do here. Things which go against the dictates that have kept us alive against all odds. I can’t keep your secret for long.”

  Gersen became uncomfortable. “I’ll leave then. I’ll leave tonight.”

  Bolivar nodded and looked apologetic. “Wait a week or so,” he said. “Oh, and would you please lie with my daughter repeatedly before you go? We need seeding from outside, you see. That is—if you don’t mind?”

  “I…” Gersen licked his lips and tried not to look eager. “No. No, I wouldn’t mind.”

  Five

  Gersen spent several pleasant nights with the lovely Estelle. She was without skill, but he found her shy, earnest nature very stimulating. They coupled repeatedly until Gersen lay stretched out on their goat-leather bedding and sighed heavily.

  Estelle ran her hands over him in the half-light. On the fourth evening, she found his injured legs. He’d forgotten to cover them, but did so quickly the moment she touched his ridged scars.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, it’s nothing.”

  “May I see? Perhaps I can help.”

  Gersen hesitated, but then relented and threw off the leather flap he’d pulled over himself. What did it matter? The girl seemed kind enough and he would be leaving soon in any case. He felt a pang at that thought. He’d visited other places like Zone Six, but never one so welcoming. It would be a shame to leave here. Perhaps, after the ripening had passed, he would return for a visit.

  “Did the pods do this to your legs? It makes me sad.”

  Gersen looked at her. He almost laughed, but she wouldn’t have understood. She was innocent, in a way. He supposed it came from living within a circle of boulders for her entire life.

  “Yes,” he said, “the pods did this. A pod-walker, to be exact. Do you want to hear the story?”

  Estelle looked at him with wide, solemn eyes and nodded. Pod-walkers were always the subject of haunting tales on Faust.

  “I was crossing a river—that’s a body of fresh water that moves downhill.”

  She laughed. “I know what a river is! We have vids, you know.”

  “Of course. Anyway, it was on the mainland, long after the ripening. I was passing through a forest and—”

  She could not contain her amazement any longer. She slapped his knee, which made him wince. “You lie to impress me!” she said. “No sane man would walk the forests on the mainland. Never.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “I never said I was fully sane.”

  “But you said it was after the ripening. Why would pod-walkers travel then?”

  “There are pod-walkers among the biggest fields in every season. They don’t all hibernate until the ripening. Do you ever see them on this island in the off-season?”

  “Rarely,” she said. “They come up from the sea sometimes, but never get close to the walls. Father says the beds up here are too thinly-soiled and so they don’t bother. They only seem to be interested in the new plantings, anyway. They do their business, tending to the newest plants and seeding fresh ones with substances from their bodies, and then move on.”

  “Well, on the mainland, things work differently. One of them caught my scent, and I had to run from it.”

  “How could you outrun such a monster?”

  “There’s only one way, you must run through the thickest growths. They will scratch you, but as the pod-walker pursues, the plants will grasp at it more desperately than they would a man.”

  Estelle stared at him, her big eyes distant. He could tell she was beginning to believe his tale. “They would all reach up to be fed. But how did you live?”

  Gersen shrugged, and indicated his legs. “The pods were more interested in the walker than they were in me. They lashed my legs badly, shredding my clothing. But there was no venom in their stings due to the season.”

  “If they’d tripped you and you’d fallen—they would have scratched you to death.”

  “Of course, but even that’s better than being peeled by a walker.”

  She looked horrified. Gersen smiled and kissed her. He could see she was impressed by his story, and he was glad he’d told her about the experience. He’d always hidden his injuries, fearing the scars would repel others, particularly women. It was a relief to have found out otherwise.

  Getting up, he went outside into the darkness and walked down the hill to a dusty area to relieve himself. He thought of Estelle, and smiled as he walked. She was going to haunt his thoughts long after he’d left this village, he knew that now.

  As he turned dust into mud, Gersen looked up into the sky. He saw something there, something he’d forgotten about. His smile faded.

  It was the streak—a strange line of light in the sky. He recalled now it had been there a few days earlier when he’d first arrived at the village. He tilted his head to examine it further. It glimmered brightly. His first impression was that it had to be a comet. They were fairly common in the cluster, much more so than back on Old Earth.

  The Oort cloud of Earth extended about a lightyear out in every direction, but in the cluster, the stars were much closer. The cloud of icy
debris orbiting each star reached out far enough to interfere with the next system. The closely huddled stars often shared comets, tossing the icy chunks from one gravity-well to the next, like a circle of men playing catch with a stone.

  But this streak in the sky was different from comets Gersen had seen in the past. It had changed its nature since the previous evening. This wasn’t just due to the nearness of Faust’s star, either. It took him a moment to realize that the angle of the object’s tail was wrong. The light streak wasn’t pointing in the correct direction. Gersen knew what most thought of as a comet was really a tail of melting debris, dragged out behind the dirty snowball nucleus. As one approached a star, the tail changed directions as it was blown back like a long rippling scarf by the blasting stellar winds. But no matter how it was viewed, a comet’s tail always pointed away from a star as it passed by. This comet’s tail was pointing out into space at a random angle. In fact, it wasn’t even straight. It seemed to curve noticeably. Which meant the object wasn’t a comet at all. Gersen frowned up at it, thinking hard.

  At that moment, he heard a crunch to his left side. He glanced in that direction. A hand reached for him out of the darkness.

  Gersen had not survived for years as a vagabond by having slow reflexes. He did not cry out or stumble in surprise. He didn’t even reach to pull up his pants. Instead, he stopped the descending hand with one of his own, grabbing the man’s wrist and yanking him closer. He met the surprised face with his second fist. The man staggered away, blood flowing.

  Another hand from a fresh attacker latched onto his shoulder from behind. Gersen rocked back and jabbed hard with his elbow. He heard a retching sound. He turned and rained blows on the second man.

  But then a flash of light went off inside his head. He spun around, stunned.

  Looking up from the ground, he saw the heavy face of Kerth grin down at him. There was a stout stick in Kerth’s hand, and blood outlined each of the man’s big teeth. Kerth had been the first man to lay hands upon him.

  Then the kicks and punches rained down on Gersen, until he no longer felt them. At least, he thought, he’d managed to land one hard blow.

  Six

  The new Engineer worked tirelessly on the ship’s stealth drive, but he soon realized the task was hopeless. The drive could not be repaired without returning to Talos. The technology was unknown elsewhere in the cluster, as far as the records showed. The idea that spare parts could be found on some backwater hole like Faust was laughable.

  But the Engineer wasn’t laughing. He knew, unlike his predecessors, that his very existence was in jeopardy. The Captain was not easily swayed by facts or sound reasoning. As the Captain was fond of saying, he was only impressed by results.

  The technical problem itself wasn’t all that daunting. The fields that dampened the emissions were out of phase, and they needed to be recalibrated. The trouble was with the nature of technology itself in the cluster. Unlike other, more organized regions of human-colonized space, the Chain had diverged. Without centralized interstellar governments and regular trade, each world had grown their own local industries to create spare parts and solve technical problems. Although they shared theoretical knowledge and many possessed advanced science, their industrial development was isolated. There were few standards that reached beyond the range of a single world. A generator produced on one planet worked on the same principles as those built elsewhere—but they were incompatible, producing power of a varied amperage, with mismatched couplings and fuel types.

  The nature of the particular component that had broken down exacerbated the problem. It wasn’t a simple power unit, or a sensor. It was the field governor, a part of the stealth drive that was a homegrown device developed on Talos. Privately, the Engineer wasn’t sure that the ship could be quickly fixed even if they were able to make planetfall at the famed orbital docks of Old Earth itself.

  “Engineer?” the Captain transmitted over the ship’s net. “It is time to make your report. You will do so in person.”

  Responding to the summons, the Engineer put down his instruments and headed for the bridge. He didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t prepare any documentation. He already knew what he was going to say.

  Every orb on the ship followed him as he passed. He ignored them all. He knew what they were thinking, and they may well be correct—perhaps his time had come. It would be a pity to end his life today. At least the disconnection would be fast and painless.

  “Well?” asked the Captain.

  The Engineer stood at attention. His burnished chassis didn’t gleam in the bright lights of the bridge. It was too burned and misused by arc-welding and chemicals. On a mech ship, the technicians didn’t bother with protective gear. The raw surfaces of their bodies were tougher than any spacer’s suit.

  “I find this interruption unexpected and unwelcome,” the Engineer said.

  “Explain yourself.”

  Surrounding the two mechs, a half-dozen bridge crewmen shifted uncomfortably. The Captain had his disconnection device in his grippers again. The mechs that were anywhere near the Engineer showed particular alarm. They moved away with clanking feet, trying to ensure that if by some accident the Captain missed with his deadly signal, they would not be affected.

  The Engineer sensed their exodus from his vicinity, but did not follow them with his orbs. Nor did he study the disconnection device with morbid fascination. He remained in a stance of rigid attention and stared at the Captain’s falsely-fleshed eyes of wet blue polymers. “Just as I said. I have nothing new to report. I’m building subsystems and adapters for the purpose of translating the substandard equipment I expect to find on Faust into something useful.”

  “Are you suggesting we’ve chosen the wrong option?”

  “That is immaterial. I’m working on the problem. This business of responding to your whimsical summons to the bridge to make daily reports is wasting my time and damaging my mental focus. I wish to get back to work, before we are pushed further behind schedule.”

  The Captain stared for a long second, then made an odd barking sound. It was the mech’s equivalent to laughter. “I like you! I wish I’d fished you out of the tank earlier. At last, an Engineer who makes no excuses! Complaints, oh yes, he has plenty of those. But only if he is dragged away from his passion.”

  The Captain spun around in a circle. In so doing, the tip of the disconnection device was leveled briefly at all present. There was an uneasy ripple of discomfort among the bridge staff, who otherwise stayed silent.

  “You see? All of you should take note of this excellent crewman’s attitude. If he were not so valuable in his current role, I’d move him up to navigation.”

  The Captain turned back to the Engineer and put his device on the table with finality. There would be no disconnections today. “Carry on, Engineer. Dismissed.”

  The Engineer did not dare look at the device on the table between them. His orbs didn’t even flicker in that direction. His thoughts, however, drifted for a brief moment. He envisioned himself grabbing the device, aiming it at the Captain and disconnecting him. The trouble was the three-second delay. It was a wise precaution which had been purposefully designed into the instrument. By the time the Engineer had stood there depressing the firing stud for three long seconds, the Captain would have called for aid and the rest of the crew would have fallen upon the traitor.

  The Engineer saluted and spun around, servos whining. He thumped his way back toward his workshop.

  Naturally, his entire performance had been bluster. He had nothing. No subsystems, no adapters—no hope. He knew he had to think of something, and he had to do it fast.

  Seven

  Gersen awoke in a pit. Before he’d even opened his eyes, he suspected it had been dug for the purpose of waste removal, probably sewage. The odor was overwhelming. Had they cast him down into a latrine?

  His head ached, and when he commanded his eyes to open, only the left obeyed. The right was sealed shut by dried blood. He mov
ed to rub at it, but his hands didn’t reach his face. They’d been restrained. His legs were free, but his wrists were tied high, forcing him to stand against one wall of the pit.

  He looked around in the dim-lit hole. It was a tiny, foul prison, an excavated pit with a roof that had once been a grill of some kind. Possibly, the grill had been part of the landing ship Bolivar had spoken of.

  There were footsteps and movement above him, where the light filtered down from above. He heard hushed voices.

  “Father, you cannot allow this,” Estelle said. “This is injustice! We have no right to cast him into the pit.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Bolivar said. “Unfortunately, things are worse than you know.”

  Gersen thought of calling to them for aid, but instead remained silent. He’d always learned more by listening than by complaining.

  “What do you mean?” Estelle hissed.

  “He’s guilty. He admitted it to me himself. He carried gourds of dead pods into our walls. A glaring breach of our laws.”

  “But the plants did nothing. Our laws must be in error.”

  Bolivar made hushing sounds. “Do not speak that way.”

  “You rule here, Father. Surely, you can explain the situation. Kerth is just jealous. His charges are clearly biased.”

  “Perhaps so, but it doesn’t matter. I do not rule here, I guide. There is a vast difference. If I twisted the law in my favor, I would lose everyone’s trust.”

  Gersen thought he heard a sob.

  “Did you have feelings for the stranger?” Bolivar asked. “I apologize. I suppose it’s only natural. I’ll do my best to make the proceedings—painless.”

  Gersen sweated in the dark pit, fully awake and straining his ringing ears to listen. He tested his bonds, but found they were made of quality binding-fiber. Applied while wet and dripping, they had constricted steadily as they dried. They were leftovers from seedpods that had ended their life cycle.