Death Drop (74 page)

The mooring line dangled helplessly from the hull of the Silverhawk as the cleat, damaged in one of the blasts from the
Triton
, peeled away from the dock like the top of a can. Dezmara nailed the throttle and the ship flashed to the outer wall and then cut a sharp turn. The Silverhawk was the fastest thing she’d ever flown and Simon could almost smell the excitement radiating from her.

“Hand me that access box, would ya? And don’t get all crazy on me just yet, luv,” Simon said with a concerned look as he snugged his harness as tight as it would go.

“I would never,” she said with mischief in her eyes. She handed him the device, and as Simon worked on opening the two sets of air-lock doors in sequence—inner followed by outer
—
Dezmara sent the Silverhawk screaming around the yard to make the ship a more elusive target.

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK! Machine gun fire rapped the Silverhawk’s hull. Having lost their chance to destroy their quarry’s only mode of transportation, the pirates were trying to wound the ship before it passed through the spreading air-lock door above. A few of the Gamorotta goons left on the burnt, smoldering docks below joined with a smattering of pot-shots from their guns, but the majority of the small army now piling into the smoky yard were concentrating their fire on the gleaming hull of the
Triton
, whose crew had retreated inside the flying fortress to take up the fight. The Silverhawk didn’t have heavy armor or a powerful arsenal, and every bullet that struck the hull—including the small arms fire—could have brought Simon and Dezmara crashing back down into the clutches of Feleon Gulkar and the Gamorotta. But what the Hawk lacked in armored defenses and formidable weaponry, she made up for with blinding speed.

Dezmara goosed the throttle and swept over top of the
Triton
. Tracer rounds spat from the pirate ship’s guns, but the bullets might as well have been gathered up by the crew and thrown at them as the projectiles glowed orange through a stretch of dockyard air long deserted by the nimble Silverhawk. “Got it, luv!” Simon shouted.

Dezmara twisted the yoke and pulled back hard, and the ship blasted off in the blink of an eye, twirling and slipping through the small gap in the inner air-lock doors, and then disappeared as Simon abruptly closed the barrier behind them.

The outer air-lock flexed open in massive, triangular shapes that separated at their tips. They darted through the small hole, and Simon aborted the opening process. They were free. Dezmara turned her customary victory rolls in a small celebration before righting the ship, but her smile didn’t pull out of the maneuver: it had twirled off into space somewhere and was lost.

“I don’t know how long we’ve got until they come after us,” she said as she tried to remain calm. She looked over, and Simon was still tapping away at the top of Fellini’s access box. “What are you doing with that thing?”

Simon slid the device into his jacket pocket and sighed easily. He leaned his head against the back of the stiff racing seat behind him and turned to face Dezmara with a wide grin that showed his pointy teeth. “They won’t be followin’ us for quite some time, luv.”

“What do you mean? What’d you do?”

“I jammed the outer air-lock door open. The inside’s programmed never to open when Trillis isn’t in a breather and the outer’s popped.”

“When it’s not in a what?” she said with a confused look.

“Atmosphere, luv, atmosphere—anyway, according to Fellini’s little black box here, there’s not even code in the mainframe to bypass it. Take ‘em weeks, it will, to sort it all out!” Simon turned back to look out the front viewing panes with a proud smile still stretched across his lips. “Where to, luv?”

“Back to Clara to patch up the
Ghost.
Rilek left some supplies we can use to get her runnin’ again.”

“Rilek?” Simon said, turning to face her again. “He’s alive? You
met
him?”

“I did. Almost killed him—he almost killed me.” Dezmara gave an awkward laugh of disbelief as she thought of everything that had happened up to now. “But that’s a story for a different time. Right now…” She turned to Simon and gave him a hard stare.

“Right, luv. S’pose it
is
a long run to Clara. Where should I start?”

“Suppose you start with the…” Dezmara reached across the gap between them and wiggled her fingers as she waved her hand up and down from Simon’s head to his feet. “Are all Kaniderelles…” She didn’t quite know the word, so she raised her eyebrows.

“Simulmorphs? No, not all of us. Some have the gene and some don’t.”

“So what can you do? I mean, can you turn into a ship and fly away or something?”

“The rules, so to speak, are simple for a simulmorph. No machinery—nothin’ with movin’ parts. I can do props—guns and the like—but anythin’ mechanical won’t work.”

“That’s why you didn’t have a stump when you morphed into Feleon!” Dezmara said.

“’Xactly, luv. Couldn’t mimic that hoverin’ support of his.” Dezmara was nodding her head in understanding, and then a look of mild terror danced across her face.

“You mean those guns wouldn’t have fired?”

“Not in a million years, luv.”

“What about powers? Would you’ve been as fast as Feleon?”

“Nope,” he said, “it’s all for show. Which brings me to the next rule of morphin’—touch.”

“Touch?” she said with confusion.

“Can’t shift into anythin’ less I’ve touched it first. You an’ I are more than a smidge lucky he grabbed me with his tail when you tossed that chair.” The smile vanished from Simon’s face as he thought about how close Dezmara had come to taking his life. “You almost killed me!” he said.

“You almost deserved it,” she said with more hurt than Simon was ready to own up to, but he took it anyway.

“I’m sorry, luv.” Simon hung his head a little.

“Are there any more rules to—
morphing
?”

“Last one. Rule number three—size. Can’t change me body mass. I can shift into any living thing—I’m pretty sure—but I’ll always stay the same size I am now.” He looked over at her and could see she was processing everything that had happened over the last three years they had been together, trying to make sense of it all. “Surprised you didn’t notice that I was quite a bit shorter than ol’ Four Guns Feleon there.”

“Hard to pay attention to the minor details when somebody you thought you knew does something like that.” Dezmara didn’t mean it in a hurtful way—it was the truth—but the pain returned to Simon’s face. “Sy, I gotta ask—did you ever change into me when we were flyin’ together?”

“Never once, luv!” His face was solemn and his big, yellow eyes were intense with truth. “Back there in Trillis was the first time, ‘onest!”

“Did you ever morph into Doj?” Simon frowned and turned away from her again.

“It’s okay,” she said sincerely. “At least now I know how you kept this whole thing from me for more than three years. I was starting to think that I was losing it—that I was thick or something if I couldn’t catch one spy that never left my ship. It feels good to know the truth.”

“For me too,” Simon said, turning to face her again. He was smiling a delicate smile and Dezmara pressed on as gently as she could.

“So how’d you come into the employ of Four Guns Feleon Gulkar, the notorious pirate?”

“Well,” he said after a moment’s pause, “you and I are alike in a lot of ways.” Dezmara shot him a puzzled look, and he put his paws out as if to say to be patient. “Where you’re lookin’ for any one of your people, I’m lookin’ for a partic’lar Kaniderelle.”

“Someone you lost because of the Durax?” Dezmara said.

“Yes, in a manner of speakin’. They took somethin’ from me. Naturally, I’d be wantin’ it back, an’ when Feleon—or Mr. Felix Grinnik—posted the need for a mechanic on a runner ship, I was more’n happy to see what it was all ‘bout—gettin’ to fly the universe more than most these days an’ all. But when I found out he wanted me to hire on with a ship that wasn’t his, to do
intelligence work—
he called it—I nearly walked. Then he told me the person he needed me to keep track of took somethin’ from him nearly five years ago an’ that I’d be helpin’ return it to its rightful owner an’ all that bollocks.

“Told me it was a personal item an’ that all I had to do was keep ‘im updated on a regular basis on the whereabouts of the ship an’ the weight of cargo an’ that he would know when his trinket was on board. Thought I was doin’ a good deed, luv.”

“You thought I was a thief all this time?”

“It was hard, it was. He described you to a ‘T’ an’ said you were a master of deception an’ not to be fooled.”

“Ha!” Dezmara said. “Look who’s talkin’!”

“Well, yeah,” Simon said cheekily, “but you gotta admit, luv, your behavior is a little
odd—
what with all the runnin’ round in masks an’ gadgets to disguise your voice an’ whatnot. When you told me you were Human, didn’t know how to take it. It explained all your peculiarities, but I didn’t know if you were onto me an’ tryin’ to trick me or somethin’!”

Dezmara understood now. She was sure Simon had made an honest mistake when he was blathering on in Trillis about ‘giving back what she had stolen,’ but hearing it from his own mouth set her heart at ease. “So what about this Kaniderelle? What did they take from you? What are you searching for?” Simon looked forward out of the viewing pane and over the slipstreamed nose of the Silverhawk with unseeing eyes. He was lost in the visions of the past, and for the first time in their friendship, Dezmara saw tears shimmer in his eyes, and the sight made her hurt too. It was the age of loss. No one escaped the destruction wreaked by the Durax.

“They k-k-k….” Dezmara looked over and Simon was clutching the sides of his head and grimacing.

“Sy, what’s the matter?” she said. “What is it?”

“They k-k-k –AAAARRRG!” Simon was trembling uncontrollably, his hands still gripping at his head, and he was screaming.

Dezmara hit the auto-pilot, unstrapped her harness and reached out for him. She had barely touched the fur on the side of his face when she choked on the foulest stench she’d ever smelled. It was like meat left to rot in the sun, and she felt like she was going to gag. But before she could retch, a blistering pain spiked into her head. Dezmara clapped her hands to her head and clawed furiously at her temples with her fingertips, but the agony only increased ten-fold. She wailed a horrible cry that would have split her own ears if they weren’t already on fire. And then she was gone.

The rasping, labored breathing of two creatures sliced through the darkness behind the cockpit and crept slowly to the lifeless figures in front of them.

“This one’s not Fellini,” one of the creatures gasped as it pointed at the unconscious form of Simon. To a mind without The Gift, the response would have been silence, but a wretched voice
did
answer, and it sounded in the brain of the first ghoul with crystal clear malice.

“It doesn’t matter,” the other groaned, “we have the supposed
Human
!”

“And the ship the Turillian promised us? The invisible ship of the pirates?”

“It will come to us in due time. After all, we have their bartering token with King Helekoth.”

Chapter 46:
Monsters

D
ezmara’s head was pounding when she came to.
“Goddam spike,”
she thought.
“Oh, shit! We’ve been caught by the Durax—
the fucking Durax!
”
The spike earned its name because that’s exactly what it felt like when a Durax ripped into your mind: like a giant spike with serrated, gnarled tines pricking from its rusty body being pounded through your brain.

The room she was in was dark, but by the smell of it she wasn’t sure if she wanted her eyes to adjust. The air was thick with the odor of rancid meat, and her throat quivered with every breath, constantly on the verge of gagging. After a few moments in the terrifying darkness, her eyes beheld the horror of her cell and she wished she could have burned the sight from her memory, but it was too late.

“Oh, my god!” she gasped as she jerked her hands up from the floor. It was moist and warm and she could feel it pulsating. She looked closer and could see patches of an alloy floor covered in some kind of organic growth. The stuff was pinkish in parts and marred by a blackened rot in others, as if she were inside the belly of a beast and could see the spreading infection of a flesh-eating disease. The patches of uninfected thew were riddled with branches of dark purple venation that she could see throbbing in the dim light. “Shit!” she yelled as she kicked up from the ground and scrambled to her feet. The walls and the ceiling were lined with the stuff, and her hair, matted and crusted to a sticky sheen from being pressed against the wall for who knows how many hours, pulled at her scalp as she stood up. “What in the fuck is this shit?” she said as she wobbled in the center of the room, turning in circles to inspect the extent of her gruesome cage.

The shape of the growth changed at one end, and Dezmara squinted to make it out. On the opposite side of the room, she could see a round portal. In the center of the opening, looping from the floor, were four ribbed bars, coated with rust from the putrid, humidified air. A large flap of the growth hung down from the ceiling and then separated into four thick hunks that tapered toward their ends. The strips of gunk were pulled taut and their tips were curled around each of the rings, blocking the exit. Small slivers of a dull, bluish light sliced between the beating bars, and Dezmara could make out movement on the other side.

She carefully stepped forward, and the mush under the soles of her boots retreated toward the walls with a wet, gurgling sound and an awful, high-pitched screech. “This shit
is
alive!” she said in disgust, and as she looked up from below her, Dezmara saw the bars uncurl themselves from the rusty ring latches and draw upward like the tentacles of a hideous creature. On the other side of the opening was one of her Duraxian captors. He was white as a ghost with horrible, black eyes, and he had needle-like teeth that overran his twisted mouth. There was a small shape clutched in his bony, sharp fingers, and before she could figure out what it was, he heaved it into the cell. The tentacles unfurled and gripped the latch rings once more, but instead of turning to go, the Durax lingered for a moment. The slits above his mouth opened wide and he took a long, rasping breath and then let out a wheezing cackle as he turned and disappeared.