Read The Devil's Nebula Online
Authors: Eric Brown
Tags: #Space Opera, #smugglers, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Human-Alien Encounters, #Adventure, #Life on Other Planets, #Space Colonies, #General
The Devil's Nebula (35 page)
“I don’t know. What if the parasite hadn’t manifested itself, was lying low just like Jed’s? He brought us back here and now he’ll have us executed so word of the infection won’t get out.”
He told himself he was being paranoid, that surely Gorley would have disposed of them on World. But his fear would not go away.
A minute later the door at the far end of the room hissed open and a guard gestured for them to exit.
He followed Lania and Alleghri from the holding suite. He recalled the first time they’d been escorted down this corridor, and how he’d attempted to maintain the upper hand by chatting with Lania and Jed, but he had never felt less like speaking now.
They entered an elevator and descended. He wondered if they were being taken to the place in the nether regions of the station where they would be summarily shot and ejected into space.
The guards escorted them from the lift and along a succession of grey corridors, and paused outside a sliding door. When it opened, Carew saw that he’d been here before.
He led the others into the amphitheatre with the long viewscreen set into the far wall.
A tall, thin man was standing before the viewscreen, his back to them. He turned and stared across the room at the new arrivals.
Commander Gorley... Carew hadn’t expected to see him again.
“Please,” Gorley said, “won’t you join me?”
Circumspectly, Carew led the way across the room. The Commander nodded at Carew, then at Lania and Alleghri, as they joined him before the viewscreen.
Gorley stood aside and gestured for them to look through the screen.
Carew stepped forward and stopped in his tracks.
He stared down into the hangar, then turned to Gorley. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Gorley smiled. “No joke, Carew. Your eyes do not deceive you.”
He heard Lania’s indrawn gasp beside him; she imagined the incredulous look on her face must mirror his own.
He turned again and stared down at his ship,
The Paradoxical Poet
, standing proudly in the middle of the hangar. Behind it, through the transparent hangar membrane, the stars of the Expansion shone.
“But,” Lania managed at last, “but we saw it destroyed.”
Gorley said, “What you saw was a computer-generated mock-up of the
Poet’s
destruction. Even the Expansion is not so profligate as to wreck a functioning starship.”
Carew gestured. “But I thought... when you left us in the holding suite –”
“I’m sorry for the delay,” Gorley said. “I had to meet with my fellow Councillors, to appraise them of the situation and discuss tactics. I apologise if any distress was occasioned.”
Lania looked down on the
Poet
. “But why?”
“Well, it is, after all, your property. If you would care to go down and inspect it.”
They left the room, climbed down a set of iron steps, and crossed to the battered, upstanding starship. Carew felt emotion constrict his throat. He never thought he’d feel like this about an ugly chunk of machinery.
Then he saw the bulky boosters at the rear end of the ship. Gorley nodded. “We thought we’d better upgrade the drives,” he said. “The previous one were rather old, wouldn’t you agree?”
Carew shook his head. “Would you mind explaining?”
Gorley cleared his throat. “We’re giving you the
Poet
,” he said.
Carew looked at him. “I sense a ‘but’ coming...”
“But, we would like to hire your services.”
Lania laughed. “Our services?”
“As interplanetary chauffeurs, between your... salvage work, let’s say.”
“Chauffeurs?” Carew echoed.
He heard a door open and footsteps rattle down an iron staircase. He turned to see a tall, tanned man being escorted across the hangar by a guard.
Gorley said, “Allow me to introduce Mr Daniel Lampeter, telepath.”
Carew’s reaction must have been evident in his expression, as Gorley said, “Fear not, Daniel is not in probe-mode at the moment. Mr Lampeter, meet your new team, Captain Ed Carew, Pilot Lania Takiomar and Security Chief Gina Alleghri – your team, that is, if they agree to my proposal.”
In a daze, Carew found himself shaking hands with the smiling Lampeter. He looked at Gorley. “Proposal?”
“The Expansion faces a threat greater than any it has ever faced before,” Gorley said. “You know the nature of that threat, and you yourself proposed one way of combating it. I have mobilised every telepath in the Expansion to track down and eliminate every last infected human in our midst. It will be a long, arduous and dangerous job, and the telepaths will need the support of reliable, efficient people, such as yourselves.” Gorley allowed himself a rare smile as he took in their reaction.
Lania spoke for Carew, “Do we really have any choice?”
Gorley had a ready reply, “Would you really want a choice, Lania?”
She laughed, found Alleghri’s hand and held it tight.
Carew turned and stared at the
Poet
, and he thought of the years that stretched ahead and smiled.
He looked at Lania and said, “I might even rename the ship.”
“Rename it?” She sounded surprised.
“In honour of Jed,” Carew said. “I think he’d like that.”
She smiled. “I think he would,” she said.
Who would have credited it, he thought? Ed Carew, in the pay of the Expansion...
But, he admitted, Gorley was right. There really was no choice.
Yet again.
He stared past the
Poet
, and through the hangar membrane, to where the massed stars of the Expansion were waiting.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to thank Patrick Mahon, Finn Sinclair, and Philip Vine, whose comments of early drafts of this novel were invaluable.
Also, I’d like to thank Jon Oliver and everyone on the team at Abaddon for giving me the opportunity to develop the
Weird Space
universe.
ERIC BROWN
Eric Brown’s first short story was published in
Interzone
in 1987, and he sold his first novel,
Meridian Days
, in 1992. He has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories and has published forty books: SF novels, collections, books for teenagers and younger children, and he writes a monthly SF review column for the
Guardian
. His latest books include the novels
Guardians of the Phoenix
,
Engineman
and
The Kings of Eternity
, for Solaris Books.
He is married to the writer and mediaevalist Finn Sinclair, and they have a daughter, Freya.
His website can be found at www.ericbrown.co.uk
BLOODY BUG-EYED BOSCHE!
On November 1st, 1916, nine-hundred men of the 13th Battalion of The Pennine Fusiliers vanished without trace from the battlefield, only to find themselves stranded on an alien planet. There they must learn to survive in a frightening and hostile environment, forced to rely on dwindling supplies of ammo and rations as the natives of this strange new world begin to take an interest. However, the aliens amongst them are only the first of their worries, as a sinister and arcane threat begins to take hold from within their own ranks!
ISBN (ePUB): 978-1-84997-212-3
ISBN (MOBI): 978-1-84997-213-0
www.abaddonbooks.com
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