The Devil's Nebula (4 page)

“I see you, human.” The transistorised voice was loud, filling the area. Carew tried to move, to duck, but he found himself frozen, immobilised by fear.

He saw movement behind the tall figure of the Vetch and glimpsed a patch of Lania’s black one-piece suit between nodding leaves.
Fire
, he thought,
before the bastard shoots me.

Then the alien turned with a speed belied by its size, brought its rifle to bear and fired, once. Its pulse-beam belched like a klaxon. Lania was punched backwards by the impact and lay unmoving on her back, cushioned by a hammock of brambles.

Something pulsed in Carew’s vision, a mist of blood, and he had to force himself not to cry out loud.

“Human,” the Vetch went on, “answer me this: what brings you to Akaria?”

Akaria: presumably the Vetch name for Hesperides.

He gripped the butt of his laser, determined now to avenge Lania’s death – even at the risk of his own life.

The Vetch answered its own question. “Greed, as ever. Is there any other motivation that drives your kind, but greed?” The alien paused, as if awaiting Carew’s response. When none came, it said, “You plan to sack the museum, am I correct? Or... Or is there something else on Akaria that brings you here?”

The alien paused, swung its great ugly head back and forth, ever vigilant. It resumed, “We were told that you were on your way, human.”

His pulse loud in his ears, Carew closed his eyes. So his secondary reason for coming here was why the Vetch were here, too, and his source had been compromised.

The growl again, the alien analogue of mocking laughter. “But you were too late, human. Far too late. We, too, knew of the starship. You will find nothing in the museum.”

His earpiece bleeped, alarmingly. He suspected Jed had heard the Vetch’s pulse-beam. He would tell his engineer to lie low, on no account approach the old park.

“Ed...” The voice was weak, almost undetectable. “Ed, it didn’t kill me. Just stunned. I’m...” He heard her attempt at laughter, and joy overwhelmed him. “I’m paralysed, but I’ll be okay. Don’t panic. Maybe...” Another spurt of laughter, “maybe the bastards aren’t as evil as I first thought, hm?”

“Lie still,” he hissed. “Don’t move. We might get out of this alive.”

“AOK, Ed.” She laughed and cut the connection.

But why, he asked himself, had the Vetch spared Lania’s life, when it would have been just as easy, and more practical, to have killed her?

The Vetch stepped forward, its knees giving that terrible flex and bob. It seemed to be directing its vast eyes straight at him.

“Will you show yourself,” it said, “so that we can discuss this like... like civilised beings? Or will you cower there for ever, like a coward?”

Carew was in two minds. The alien had spared Lania when it could just as easily have fried her alive. And now it wanted to talk. If he showed himself and spoke to the alien about the crashed starship, then would it spare him to leave the planet with his life?

Or was the Vetch playing a game? Would it keep the humans alive in order to find out how much they knew, and then slaughter him and Lania dispassionately?

He saw movement to the alien’s left and his first assumption was that Jed had taken it upon himself to play the unlikely hero.

Then he caught the flash of golden fur as the animal leapt towards the Vetch.

He had no idea what moved him to stand and fire at the kreesh.

His first shot – unlike Lania’s earlier that day – connected squarely with the beast’s head, and it dropped to the ground a metre from the stunned Vetch.

Carew was in full view of the Vetch, and the alien was an easy target.

Seconds stretched and the representatives of two very different races regarded each other under the glare of an alien sun.

At last the alien spoke, “I owe you my life, human.”

Carew said, “You did not kill my colleague.”

It took a few seconds for the alien’s translator to relay Carew’s words, then it responded, “We are not barbarians, human. Despite your stories, despite the actions of a few of my kind in the past, we do not kill indiscriminately.”

Carew inclined his head, “Humans, too, or many of us, are loath to take life, save that which threatens us.”

Carew stepped from the pavilion and approached the giant alien. He felt fear clutch his gut and a pounding in his head which told him to fight, or flee. He was twelve again and he was on his homeplanet of Temeredes, attempting to look after his ten year-old sister.

He staunched those memories, fearful of where they might lead, of what they might impel him to do here, today; actions which he knew might prove fatal.

He faced the Vetch, something he had never expected he would do, and he did not flinch as he beheld its ugliness. “I was told of the starship, how it crash-landed here a hundred years ago. My source didn’t know where it came from, though he did say it was not Vetch.”

“It was not our ship, but we too heard rumours.”

“Rumours?” Carew echoed. His source, an elderly Hesperidian politician, had mentioned no rumours.

The Vetch blinked, once, its pink eyelids nictitating from the bottom up and cupping the bulging eyes grotesquely. It seemed to be assessing how much to tell him, and decided to keep its own counsel.

It said, “If you are ignorant of the rumours, then it would be unwise of me to enlighten you. Suffice to say that the alien ship was not Vetch – it came from beyond what you know as Vetch space.”

The Vetch raised a hand to its misshapen lips and spoke into a handset.

Carew said, “You will allow us to leave, unharmed?”

“As I said, human, we are not barbarians. Your colleague will return to full fitness in due course. My ship is coming for me. I suggest that you leave Akaria and do not return.” He paused, staring down at the sprawled carcass of the kreesh. “For your actions here today, human, I thank you.”

And so saying, the Vetch turned on its heels and stepped into the cover of the jungle.

Carew moved across to where Lania lay, face up on a bed of brambles. He lifted her with some difficulty, eased her to the ground and placed his water bottle to her lips. She drank, watching him all the while with an unreadable expression in her eyes.

He guessed he would soon have much explaining to do.

CHAPTER THREE

L
ANIA WONDERED WHAT
hurt the most: the stunning impact of the Vetch’s pulse-beam, or the fact that Ed had lied to her about the reason for coming to Hesperides.

Her immediate reaction, on seeing the alien turn and fire its weapon before she could do the same, was despair at dying in such a stupid fashion. She could only imagine the disgust of her military teachers at the manner of her end. She had been silent in tracking the Vetch, but she had not taken into account the direction of the breeze: it was her scent, she realised, that had alerted the alien.

Then the pulse-beam hit her and flung her backwards and she truly thought she was dying. Pain tore like fire through every muscle of her body. Then the agony abated little by little and she came to the amazing realisation that she was still alive. That, for whatever reasons, rather than kill her, the Vetch had chosen merely to stun.

She had heard voices: the oddly inhuman transistorised words of the Vetch and Ed’s cautious replies. And then she forgot the physical pain as she learned that Ed Carew had come here, had endangered his life and those of his crew, for reasons other than the retrieval of the precious statuette.

Now he knelt and lifted her from the bed of thorns and lay her on the ground. Despite her anger, she felt safe in his arms; she hated herself for it, but it was as if she were a child again, cradled in her father’s safe embrace.

When she’d marshalled all her strength and had control of her limbs, she dashed the bottle from her lips and glared at him.

Patiently he picked up the bottle, snapped the lid shut and said, “I can understand how you feel, but I saw no reason to inform you and Jed about the starship.”

She struggled upright, wincing as pain lanced through the muscles of her back. “You lied!” she said. “You lied to us!”

He shook his head. “I was merely economical with the truth. I said we were coming here for the statuette, which was true.”

“You said nothing about the starship, or that the bastard Vetch would be here too!”

He stared at her. “I didn’t know that the Vetch would be investigating the ship. Do you think I would have brought us here if that were so?”

“But why didn’t you tell us about the starship? Why didn’t you want us to know?”

He gestured with an upturned palm, one of his unflappable gestures which infuriated Lania. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to know. I would have told you when we had the statuette. It was merely that I didn’t want you and Jed – Jed, principally – objecting to spending any more time here than was absolutely necessary.” He smiled at her. “You don’t know what a pain you two can be when you decide to gang up on me.”

She could not help but smile, but resented the impulse. She struggled to her feet, batting away Ed’s attempt to assist her. She grabbed the water bottle from him and hobbled into the centre of the clearing, as much to give herself time to think as to get away from him.

The city of Valderido was in a basin, enclosed to the north, east and west by the mountains known as the Three Sisters. She thought it must have been a wonderful place to live, before the enforced evacuation.

She took a long drink of water and said, “You two seemed pretty pally.”

Ed stared at her across the clearing. He was a tall, slim man, unnaturally pale, his lean face thin and hawk-like. He disdained any kind of uniform, wearing instead a casual two-piece outfit comprising straight-cut trousers and bodice, the kind of attire worn by millions across the Expansion.

Lania had known Ed Carew for ten years, ever since he had recruited her at a time of her life she would rather forget about: and yet, she thought, she had never got to know him. He was guarded about his past and just as reticent about his feelings.

The odd thing was that she trusted this man, this lone starship captain who was, to all intents and purposes, still a stranger.

Lania had tried to talk about her past to him, yet whenever she began, he found some way to divert the conversation to other, inconsequential things. It was as if he didn’t want to know her, and at first that had hurt.

Over the years she had come to realise that this was just who Ed Carew was, a loner. He had no emotional attachments of any kind, and no wish to form them.

He said, “I saved its life.”

“Do you think it might have killed us, otherwise?”

He hesitated. “I honestly don’t know. It would have been within its rights. After all, we are trespassers on Vetch territory.”

“But it didn’t kill me,” she pointed out.

“As it said, it and its kind are not barbarians – despite what we’ve been led to believe.”

She stared at him. She detected conflict in his voice: it was as if he, too, found it hard to believe the alien’s... humanity.

“Why the interest in the crashed starship, anyway?” she asked.

His reply was interrupted by a roar of jet engines. Instinctively she ducked and ran towards Ed on the edge of the clearing. They took cover in the undergrowth, Ed’s arm protectively around her shoulders, and looked up as the Vetch scoutship swept overhead, flew in a great loop over the capital, then angled upwards and vanished into the stratosphere.

A great weight seemed to lift from Lania’s shoulders.

“Well?” she said, staring at her captain.

“I’ll contact Jed, and then I’ll explain.”

They stood in the shadow of the jungle and Ed opened up radio communications. “Jed?”

“Captain...” The engineer’s voice sounded, tremulous with fear, in Lania’s earpiece.

“Where are you?” Ed asked.

“I... I don’t know. In the jungle. I heard firing.”

Lania instructed her smartsuit to locate Jed’s position, then projected a map on the air. A tiny red light blinked, half a kay north of the museum.

“Follow me,” she said.

“We’re coming for you, Jed,” Ed said.

Lania led the way through the jungle, following the map that hung in the air a metre before her.

They came across the engineer ten minutes later.

He was still cowering in the undergrowth, for all the world like some animal gone to ground in fear of its life. Which he was, Lania thought as she stood above him and prodded his ample backside with the toe of her boot – an overweight, cowardly animal burying its head in the sand.

Ed helped him to his feet and he looked sheepishly at Lania. “I thought you were dead. I heard firing. What happened?”

She told him what had occurred in the clearing. “But Ed has a confession to make.”

Jed looked confused, an expression which rather suited his doughy face.

They followed the blasted tunnel back through the undergrowth towards the museum. Ed said, “Not a confession, Lania. More an admission.”

Jed shook his head. “Will someone please tell me what you’re both on about?”

They emerged into the sunlit square and moved into the shade of the museum’s entrance. A plinth of steps rose towards a triangular glass door, shattered to opacity now but still intact.

They sat on the top step and drank from their water bottles.

“A month ago I heard a story about a crashed ship on Hesperides,” Ed began. “I was on Terpsichore, while you two were on leave.”

Lania looked away. She’d told Ed she was going to her homeplanet of Xaria, to visit her family. Instead she’d spent her time in a gymnasium on one of the moons of Terpsichore.

Ed was saying, “You know I have an interest in the evacuated worlds. In my research I came across the story of an alien ship that’d come down a hundred years ago, here on Hesperides. I tracked down a politician in office at the time and he told me a little more about it. All very hush-hush. The ship had crash-landed almost fifty years before the Vetch ordered the evacuation, but it wasn’t a Vetch ship, nor did it belong to any of the other known star-faring races. The odd thing was that the authorities who investigated the wreck found no signs of life aboard the ship, and it couldn’t have been running on auto as it didn’t posses the technology to do so. The authorities feared that whoever had landed were abroad on the planet, which opened up all sort of security problems.”