Fleet of Knives Read online

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  JOHNNY SCHULTZ

  We had been cowering in the narrow maintenance tunnels for over twenty-four hours, and my nerves were beginning to unravel. I’d snatched a few disconnected, twitchy moments of sleep, but I’d spent them dreaming of our lost crewmembers—of Vito, Chet, Jansen, Monk, and Kelly. Five friends torn away in the space of a day and a half. Five comrades who’d died messy, painful deaths because they’d wagered their lives on “Lucky” Johnny Schultz and his desperate, idiotic quest to earn a little easy money.

  With Kelly gone, we were unsure what to do next. She’d been the only one of us with combat experience. Without her, we were five frightened civilians with guns, trying to look after a peculiar little girl in the bowels of an ancient alien ship infested with what appeared to be giant deadly crustaceans.

  Abe Santos sat quietly, teeth clenched against the pain in his foot. Gil Dalton checked and rechecked his medical supplies, occasionally shaking his head over some crucial shortage or other. And the accountant, Henri Bernard, looked as if he had been thrown so far out of his comfort zone, I wondered if he’d ever truly be able to find his way back. Even if we made it out of here in one piece, I suspected a part of him would always be wandering these darkened corridors, pursued by snapping horrors. Only Riley Addison seemed to be fully plugged in to the moment and aware of the others around her. When she saw me watching her, she brushed back a strand of auburn hair.

  “How are you doing?” Torchlight gleamed off the gold stud in her right eyebrow. The scuffed aluminium neck ring of her spacesuit framed the lower part of her face.

  “I’ve had better days.”

  “Haven’t we all?” She came to sit beside me, her back leaning against one side of the corridor and her feet resting against the opposite wall.

  “But seriously,” she lowered her voice. “You’re the captain here. None of these people have a clue what to do. If we’re going to get through this, we’re going to need you to man up and start acting as if you’re in charge.”

  “It was me being in charge that got us into this mess.”

  “And that means you have a responsibility to get us out again.”

  I looked down at my hands. “I’m not sure I know how.”

  “You’ve just got to address the problems one at a time.” She tapped the lamp on her helmet, which was currently dangling from her tool belt. “Take the torches for example. I don’t think our batteries are going to last much longer. Henri’s are almost gone already, and the rest can’t be far behind.”

  “So we need to find some light?”

  “Yes, unless you’d rather sit here in the dark?”

  I shuddered at the thought. Then I thought of Kelly, lying back there in the darkness.

  “I don’t know if I’ve got it in me.”

  Addison’s face softened. She put a hand on my arm. “We know what you’ve done in the past. We’ve all heard the stories. If anyone can get us out of here, it’s Lucky Johnny Schultz.” She smiled. “Maybe all you have to do is ask yourself what Lucky Johnny would do in this situation?”

  What indeed? If past experience were anything to go by, Lucky Johnny would muddle his way through somehow. He’d scrape through and then ascribe his good fortune to his legendary luck. But I couldn’t say that to her. Not now, not here. Not when it was clear somebody had to step up and take the initiative in order to get the others moving and working together as a team.

  * * *

  When I was young, I was awkward and fidgety and raw. I grew up in a town near a failing river port. It was shrouded in fog most days, and the port lights made the sky glow a hellish orange. When it wasn’t foggy, it was raining, and the corrosive salt air blew in off the muddy grey mouth of the estuary, cold and sharp like rusty barbed wire.

  Rackham’s Landing was the sort of dismal hinterland most people only passed through on their way to somewhere else. Those that stopped and stayed tended to be lost or desperate, or beyond caring. Either they were looking for trouble, or they were trying to hide from it.

  I grew up in a house by the river shore, in a row of fishermen’s cottages. At high tide, the lamp light from the front room window spilled out over the muddy creek water. When it rained, the lights of the houses on the far shore swam and smeared. I’d sit by that window when my father was out, waiting for the lights of his little boat to appear through the gloom, listening to the pop and sizzle of the ship-to-shore radio.

  Until one night, my father failed to return.

  It was the night the Endurance exploded. Lightning crackled through the overcast sky. Thunder growled. The waves crashed over the flood defences, smashing their spray against the shingle walls of the house. During lulls, I could hear foghorns out in the channel.

  My mother joined me at the window. “It’s time you were off to bed,” she said half-heartedly.

  I rubbed the glass where it was misting. I could see she didn’t mean it, that she wanted my company. “Just a few minutes more,” I said.

  Down by the creek, I could see lights: there were kids on the Endurance.

  She was a rusty old hovercraft, built to transport cargo. She lay in the mud at the back of the creek and the local teenagers used her as a hangout. They sat in her hold, drinking and smoking.

  When her leaky fuel tank exploded, the blast shook the windows of the house. It echoed along the street. Front doors were thrown open and people appeared, pulling coats over their pyjamas. My mother went with them.

  It took most of the night to bring the blaze under control. There were kids trapped by the fire. Driving rain and intense heat hampered the rescuers. And all the while, out at sea, my father was drowning. The storm had swamped his small boat. With everyone crowded around the burning Endurance, there was no one to hear his final, desperate calls. No one except me, listening to the radio as I clung helplessly to the window, too scared to move.

  When I was fifteen, I ran away from the pain of that night. I locked my past away, where it couldn’t hurt me, and I rode the freighters that dragged from world to world. I stowed away to get my first taste of higher dimensional travel. I got a tattoo. I lost my virginity behind a greasy café on a cold world whose name I could never remember.

  On one planet, I was caught on the ground during a hurricane that lasted a year. And on another, I spent three days wandering alone in an arctic blizzard. And although those experiences were frightening, they could never compare to the night the Endurance went up. So I began taking bigger and bigger chances. I did stupid, dangerous things, and because I survived, I acquired a reputation for being lucky.

  But really, I’d been running the whole time. And I hadn’t stopped running until I bought the Lucy’s Ghost.

  * * *

  I rubbed my palms together. If ever there had been a time to try to live up to my reputation as a freewheeling adventurer, that time was now.

  I stood up and cleared my throat. “Hey, Lucy.”

  The child smiled up at me with her disconcertingly blue eyes. “Yes, dearie?”

  “You say you’re linked to the Restless Itch? Is there any way you can ask it to turn the lights on in here?”

  The smile grew wider. “But of course.”

  She screwed up her little face, and the floor shuddered. I heard the hum of machinery and power behind the walls. And then the light panels on the ceiling came to life. I narrowed my eyes into slits, shading my face with my hand. After a day spent grubbing around by torch, it took a few moments to adjust to the dim sepia light now flooding the corridor.

  We blinked at each other, smiles cracking our tired, grime-smudged faces. We weren’t out of harm’s way yet, but we had a temporary refuge and we had light, and suddenly everything seemed a tiny little bit less hopeless.

  “Okay,” I said. “Everybody make sure your guns are fully loaded. We don’t have much ammunition, so let’s share it around sensibly. And, Henri, when you’ve got a minute, can you take a squint at the food situation? Do an audit or something. Fin
d out how much we’ve got left.”

  I looked down at Addison and she gave me the thumbs-up.

  Then her face grew serious again and she caught my sleeve, pulling me down so she could talk quietly. “There’s something else,” she said. “Those creatures back there. I’ve seen them before.” She rubbed her chin. “Well, I’ve seen one of them. Back on Hellebore, in the aftermath of a particularly brutal reality quake, my dad’s friend, Walt, found one dying in the desert outside the settlement. It had killed maybe a dozen cattle, but something was wrong with it. Maybe it poisoned itself eating the cows. Whatever. The way Walt told it, he flipped the thing over and drove a steel fencepost through the soft underbelly. Then he dragged the carcass back to town to show it off.”

  “So, we need to flip them over?” I didn’t relish our chances of getting near enough to one of those creatures without getting snapped in its claws.

  Addison shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe.” She got to her feet and dusted herself down. “I guess what I’m really saying is I don’t think they come from around here. I don’t think they’re local, if you know what I mean.”

  I glanced around at the polished rock walls. “Lucy said they came aboard around the same time we did, so we know they’re not native to this ship.”

  “It’s more than that.” She ejected the used power cells from her plasma rifle and let them clink and rattle on the floor. “I don’t think they’re even from this universe.”

  “What?”

  “Think about it. The only other time any of us has seen one was after a really big reality quake, on the edge of the Intrusion. And now, suddenly there are more of them, just appearing out of nowhere.”

  “Straight after we were attacked in the hypervoid.”

  “Exactly.”

  I frowned. “But the thing I saw was massive, and looked totally different. It was sleek, with wings and a tail. Kind of like a dragon.”

  Addison made a face. “There must be a connection. Otherwise it’s too much of a coincidence for these crayfish things to show up at the same exact moment we did. I mean, how would they even get here?”

  I thought about it. Up until now, I’d been too busy worrying about the after-effects of the collision, and all the other shit we’d been through. But Addison was right. These things couldn’t have got here under their own steam—not unless they were packing miniature jump engines under those metallic carapaces. Therefore, they must have come through the fissure between here and the higher dimensions, pulled through in our wake.

  “I guess they could be fleas,” I said.

  Addison frowned. “Fleas?”

  “You remember that cat Vito tried to bring aboard a couple of months back? It was riddled with them. Little bloodsuckers.”

  “I know what fleas are. What’s your point?”

  “When the larger creature attacked us, maybe some of its parasites got dislodged, and fixed onto our ship.”

  Addison pursed her lips as she thought about it. “I guess that makes about as much sense as anything else.”

  A few metres along the narrow corridor, Henri Bernard watched us with narrow-eyed wariness. “What are you two whispering about?”

  I flashed him what I hoped was my most rakish grin. “We’re deciding what our next move should be.”

  He looked unimpressed. “And what have you decided?”

  “We’re going to let the monsters eat you while we escape.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  SAL KONSTANZ

  From the readings, I wasn’t sure whether the multi-limbed thing crawling around the wreck of the Lucy’s Ghost was a creature or a machine. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t much care. The damn thing gave me the creeps, so I gave Trouble Dog permission to target it.

  “Just don’t damage the wreck,” I said. “There may still be someone alive inside.”

  “The text file says no.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s right. We have to check.”

  “Your concern is noted.”

  The hull rang as one of the defence cannons fired a quick burst. Five rounds rapid. On the screen, the monster jerked. Splinters flew from its carapace, ropes of fluid burst from its shattered body like uncoiling serpents, and the sharp-pointed legs detached from the old freighter, curling under the remains of the shredded carapace like the petals of a dying flower.

  I watched it tumble away, still venting fluid and strangely shaped internal organs.

  “What was that thing?”

  “I don’t know,” the Trouble Dog said. “There’s nothing like it in any of my reference files. I’ve sent an information request to the House, but they’ve yet to respond.”

  Alva Clay asked, “Could it have come off that Nymtoq ship?”

  “I don’t think so. It certainly wasn’t native to Nym, or any of the other Nymtoq worlds.”

  “Are there any more of them?”

  “I can detect nothing.”

  “Any heat sources that might be survivors?”

  “One. Although it’s faint.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Aft lower deck, engineering.”

  I glanced across at Alva Clay. “What do you think?”

  She had already swung around in her couch and placed her booted feet on the deck, ready to rise. “If there’s someone in there, we’ve got to at least try to get them out,” she said. “After all, it’s what we’re being paid for, right?”

  * * *

  We went across in pressure suits, and set up an inflatable airlock on the ship’s hull. Once it was in place, we pulled ourselves inside and cut our way through the plating, into the engineering spaces towards the rear of the crippled ship. Clay carried her Archipelago pistol in one gauntleted fist. If anything surprised us, she wanted the ability to punch a hole through it. And, as the weapon used a magnetic accelerator to launch its projectiles, there would be no recoil to throw her off-balance.

  “It looks a mess in there,” she said. Her voice sounded loud and breathy over the link.

  Huddled behind her in the cramped space of the temporary lock, I could see smoke and fallen beams, dangling light fittings and exposed cabling.

  “Go careful,” I said.

  “Always.”

  Switching on the powerful LED lamp on the front of her helmet, she pulled through, lowering herself into the interior, and I watched her disappear into the smoke and gloom below. My job was to stay by the opening, maintaining contact with the Trouble Dog.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “Nothing yet.” I could hear the exertion in her voice as she clambered through the damaged spaces of the engine room. “Wait. Hang on a second.”

  “What have you got?”

  “It’s a Druff.”

  “Is it alive?”

  “The scanner says it’s still warm, but its heart rate’s almost nothing, and it doesn’t seem to be breathing.”

  I bit my lower lip, thinking back to the courses in alien medicine I’d taken when I first joined the House. “I’ve heard of this. When seriously injured, the Druff go into a state of suspension. Sort of like a coma. They slow their metabolism down to almost nothing, and only breathe once every ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Do you think that’s what’s happening here?”

  “It could be. Can you move him?”

  “If I can roll him onto an inflatable stretcher, I can try dragging him back.”

  “Do you need a hand?”

  “No, stay there for now. I’ll call if I get stuck.”

  “Okay.”

  I braced myself at the opening. Over the link, I could hear Clay huffing and cursing as she tried to move the unconscious creature. Around us, the ship creaked and juddered, and I whispered a quick prayer it wouldn’t fragment before we were done.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Clay puffed, and I realised I’d left my end of the link open. “There aren’t any gods watching over the likes of us.”

  “Well, it can’t hurt.”

 
“As long as this broken-ass ship’s listening, that’s all that matters.”

  I saw her helmet lamp casting shadows through the smoke. “I can see you!”

  “Yeah, I’m almost there.” She let out a tired breath. “But he’s a heavy bastard. Can you come and help me lift him over this last bit?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Grasping the lip of the hole, I swung my boots over the edge and dropped into the wreck.

  * * *

  By the time we got the Druff back to the Trouble Dog’s infirmary, my muscles were screaming in protest. Clay had her helmet off, and her face shone with perspiration. The stiffness in her movements betrayed her own exhaustion.

  Somehow, we’d manhandled the comatose alien onto one of the beds, and Preston was examining it.

  “What have we got?” I asked him.

  “It’s roughly middle-aged,” he said. “But unresponsive.” He moved the medical scanner across the creature’s back. “There’s some evidence of broken ribs and internal bleeding.”

  “But it’s alive?”

  “It seems to be in a state of hibernation.” He stood back and tapped a finger against his chin. “Almost as if it’s conserving its remaining energy, waiting for help to reach it.”

  “Or for someone to cart it back to the World Tree,” Clay said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Is there anything you can do for him?” I asked. Since being uncovered as a fraud, Preston had been using every spare moment to study for his medical licence.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Then do what you can,” I said. “The ship will help you, and I’m sure Nod can answer any questions you may have about Druff anatomy. Although, it’s anybody’s guess whether you’ll be able to decipher what it says.”

  “And what about us?” Clay said, wiping the back of a hand across her forehead. “What’ll we do while he’s doing that?”

  I unscrewed my gloves and tucked them in my pocket. Flexed aching fingers. “We go looking for that Nymtoq ship,” I said. “And hopefully that’s where we’ll find the rest of the survivors.”