The Adventures of Deacon Coombs (30 page)

Deacon was adamant. “Jim, they pursue us to kill Travers and me. Since the ship gains on us and we have only minimal weapon strength, you endanger my life by delaying acceleration. Therefore you are violating your prime directive. I order you to execute your prime directive and save me.”

Deacon could not determine whether Jim was engaged in deliberating the logic of his argument or was engrossed in navigational movements. Gem, sitting beside Deacon, said, “Travers grows weaker from his loss of blood. The infection in the wound is growing stronger.”

Jim enthusiastically said, “I have recalculated the odds, and there is a slight benefit to attempt escape. As a matter of record, the odds…”

Deacon sat back to relax, closing his eyes. He heard Jim’s babbling, but his thoughts were focused on their escape.

Jim started the countdown. “Five… four… three… two… one… rockets!”

Deacon was glued to the back of his seat as the computer took charge and shot them forward at an incredible acceleration. Then the treacherous route started as they dodged obstructions. Deacon’s body was thrown about, first left, then right, then forward, and then backward. He tried to steady himself and catch a glimpse of the screen, but he witnessed only blurred images shooting by them. The screams of Travers filled the craft, splitting Deacon’s ears with madness, but he and Gem and Quobit were currently hopeless to attend his friend. The path of the meandering vessel continued until the
Heritage
leveled out.

Gem looked at Jim. “We’ll have to make our way to the next hiding spot hurriedly before the chasers track us.”

Deacon noted the area where lightning ripped apart the space ahead, with red and blue lights ablaze in the heavens. “Jim, what is that area of burning space?”

“That is the Sodern Inferno, so named by the first travelers to enter this region. It is not ablaze. The effects are incandescent lights.”

“Can we travel through it to disguise our path?”

“It is out of our way, sire.”

“I want us to enter the inferno ahead just as the other craft emerges from the cloud behind us. When inside, accelerate, turn to move out quickly to the edge, then veer to hide in the middle of the Sodern Inferno.”

Invasions of the mind

The ship performed the maneuver perfectly. Deacon was proud of the escape that he had concocted. The light show of the Sodern Inferno took his mind from the gravity of the situation, as it provided the most spectacular entertainment he had seen in space, and they were in the middle of it. Blue spots danced about, orange wisps contorted around the heavens, and red and purple shots bolted through the celestial images. After absorbing the light show, Deacon retreated up to the top deck, where he spied Travers, who was resting comfortably in his room.
Did
he
really
cry
out
or
did
I
imagine
it?
Deacon wondered. Sitting in front of the viewer, working the dials in front of him, he scanned the 360-degree view until they left the Sodern Inferno and traversed the escape route.

Quobit was suddenly beside him. “My small wounds ache. I believe I shall find a corner in the same room as Travers and sleep.”

“Quobit, before you retire, look at that corner of the quadrant.” Deacon pointed. “For a moment, I imagined that a tiny patch of stars blinked at me as I scanned the area.” He rubbed his eyes, which were slightly sore from the sting of the air on Nix, thinking of how many hours had passed without a comatose sleep.

“Your eyes play tricks,” Quobit said. “Like Travers and me, we all require sleep. Please get some, Deacon.” Quobit left, and Deacon closed his eyes, but he shuffled restlessly in his seat for minutes. When he awakened, he strained his eyes again. He adjusted the monitor to calibrate the area they fled, and he unmistakably saw the same phenomenon again—a patch of stars directly behind them blinked out and then came back. In his state, he dismissed it to the gravitational forces in the dust clouds.

Acutely, he maintained the same lookout. To his surprise, the same spectacle happened. This time, however, a larger area was blocked out. It was as if there was a malfunction in the scanner. But there it was—a wave of blackness obliterating stars and then reversing to uncover the stars. He sat stunned.

“Gem,” he called down to the lower deck, “does your screen show any signs of malfunctioning from nearby dust, lightning, electricity?”

“No, Master.” He vaguely heard the reply, but it was definitive.

“Quobit. Quobit.” He glanced into the room; she was sleeping, curled up, a smile on her face.

He focused on Gem again. “Gem, do you see blackness in the sky behind us, twisting at uh… one hundred twenty-two point five degrees?”

“No, Master.”

“Gem,” he said excitedly, “There it is, this time at ninety-seven point six degrees! The stars are blacking out, Gem. Something is causing a spatial disturbance!”

Once again Gem gave a barely decipherable response. “No, Master.”

Deacon didn’t believe that. The phenomenon appeared so rhythmic, so ominous. As he watched the skies, his eyes only inches from the screen, a wand of black hell started moving, this time on the left side of his screen. It then progressively moved across it to the right. His hands felt the screen, drawn to it. In madness, he pounded on the screen and then summoned Gem again.

“Sire, there is no visible or detectable object registering to cause such an occurrence. In addition, I do not see it.”

Deacon persisted with his watch, sitting on the edge of his seat. All was serene as they rocketed through the heavens. After some time, the whole sky began to blacken, again from left to right, only this time the blackness waved up and down as it barreled across the heavens. Now the effect terrified him, causing him to jump. Deacon was petrified and confused. He was a man of science. He didn’t believe in fantasies.

He was glued to the screen when it hit him. A face was now barely visible, with two enormous bloodshot eyes looking right into the spot where he sat in the ship. A protruding jaw stood out as wings flapped; a diabolical birdlike monster was about to engulf the
Heritage
.

“Gem!” he shouted, feverishly tried to warn them. “Alter course. Alter course. We are being attacked!”

There was no answer from below. He raced down to the lower level, where the Owlers were calmly going about navigating the ship, sitting at the control panels, warding off Deacon’s distractions, focused on the escape mission. “Damn you two,” he said. “There is something out there threatening us. I see a ship disguised as a bird! Disguised as a dragon. Look. Both of you!”

Gem looked back at him not with the expressionless, sterile face that he had grown accustomed to, but instead with a demonic sneer that sent him spinning into raw chills. “Gem, what’s wrong? What are you doing?”

“Nothing… sire.” Her answer was dispassionate, but the sneer remained.

He escalated up the stairs to see that the beet-red eyes were moving closer. “Summon the nearest patrol, Jim.”

Outside, the wings flapped up and down. For an instant, Deacon even imagined that he heard their leathery movements, like the sound of an ancient pterodactyl. Suddenly, the ship accelerated, knocking him to the floor. But the demon kept pace. The face, with beak open and sharp teeth exposed, hissed at him, threatening to devour the ship, moving perilously closer, snapping.

The flapping now was so deafening that Deacon turned his head away and covered his ears as he lay on the floor. The vessel turned and rolled as he crashed into some cabinet doors. Then someone summoned him. “Deacon Coombs.” The voice was the same mesmerizing pitch as the one he had heard on the mount. It was Urzel. And there was no escape. “You are dead. Submit. You are helpless against me.” Then the voice launched into a sadistic laugh, first as a gurgle in the throat, moving to a fiendish howl that stuck as a malignancy in Deacon’s brain. “You are mine. Submit to me.”

Deacon remembered Lyanna. He thought of her and situated her firmly in his mind, trying with all his mental might to expel Urzel from his thoughts. He rose; he walked to the screen to stare at the two fiendish eyes, his body in shivers and a light-headed feeling smothering him. Then he recalled Lyanna’s teachings. He stood rigid, his nerve mustered and his calm composure regained, and then calmly replied, “I am not afraid of you.” He stood there with his arms folded, wearing a slight smile. Then, in an instant, he pointed at Urzel and screamed, “I am more powerful than you.” He waved his arm, his fingers and palms open, and yelled, “Be gone, you snake! You are not wanted here. You are not in control of me any longer. Be gone!” He shouted over and over to admonish the demon. “I exorcise you from this ship!”

With the word
exorcise
, a strange happening occurred. He found himself on the floor of the observation deck, awake, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding. But all was quiet inside and with the heavens. The stars were all in their proper alignment, and the only sound was the murmur of the engines of the
Heritage
.
Was
that
a
hallucination?
he wondered. He scampered to the control level immediately, where the Owlers were engaged in navigational exercises and communications with the real world.

“Where are we?”

Gem replied, “Master, we will be making a refueling stop at a mining colony within the hour, and we will then proceed to Thous, where we will Vesper.”

“Did I summon you during the last while?”

“Yes, you inquired about a vision that you saw on your monitor on your deck.”

“That is all? Nothing else happened? You heard me say nothing else?”

“You only presented a single inquiry, Master.” Gem turned away to assist Jim.

“But did we flee from another ship?”

“There was another ship in pursuit, Master, but we hid in the Sodern Inferno, remember? We lost it as we traveled back into space.”

Deacon wasn’t satisfied. “Did you not see that giant demonic bird outside? Are there no records in the logs?”

Gem looked peacefully back. “Master, we have been engaged in navigating the
Heritage
. There was no bird or apparition. I do not understand. You did not summon us but once, to ask about a malfunction of your video screen.” Gem and Jim began communicating with the docking station.

The
bird,
the
dragon,
the
flapping
wings—was
this
a
dream?
he wondered. The feelings of fear were real enough, and he felt a discomforting light-headedness throbbing in his forehead. Every muscle ached. He moved sluggishly to the counter to extract some medicine to relieve the aches. Then he entered the room where Quobit and Travers slept. Faintly, he heard, “Dea… con. De-e… k-k-k-k-k… kon.” He dropped the vial, and the pills rolled on the floor.

The sound petrified him. He moved slowly across the room and saw Travers lying on his cot. He had aged a hundred years. Deep furrows lined his face and his eyes had sunk into his head. Fresh purple plasma stained his beautiful fur, and the wound was bare, leaking more blood and plasma onto the sheets and over his body. “Dea… k-k-k… kon,” he said, stretching his arms out in the direction of the Earthman.

Deacon shouted, “Gem, come here quickly.” As he shouted, Quobit stirred and gasped at the sight of Travers’s bloody torso. Deacon, on his knees, clutched Travers. The Aralian was convulsing, salivating profusely, and hanging on to Deacon for dear life. Quobit joined them and, sighed deeply, sensing the end of life.

“Travers, does the Alliance know that you took the
Sleigher
to Nix?”

“No. F-f-f-f-f-f… find Chu… bby. Ch… ch… ch.”

“Where?”

“He has. He knows the s-s-s-s-s… secret. He h-h-h-h… has-s-s what you want. F-f-find Ch… ch… ch… Chubby. He… knows who devil is. Deeeeeeee…”

They sat and hugged until the last dying breath left Travers’s cavity. In his emotional state, there was nothing better for Deacon to do than silently give praise for this honorable person whom he had come to admire. He held the little giant in his arms as Gem arrived, inspected him, and then pronounced him dead.

Deacon was angry. He turned to Quobit. “He deserved better than this.” No one else heard his words.

As Deacon watched the body be sterilized and then bagged by the Owlers, he felt numb and angry. Flashes of their trip ripped apart his mind. He walked back to the control seat, where Quobit joined him, taking his hand and caressing it—a Jabu custom of sympathy. “What has been accomplished, Quobit? The little trader did not find peace from all the charges against him; we found an evil so powerful that millions of beings are obeying it, worshipping it. We have risked the odds, chanced death. And for what? The murders of Geor and Como have not been solved. And about Urzel, what can I say to Landrew?”

“Deacon, I think a quick rout by Alliance forces on the planet Nix is in order.”

In silence, Deacon meditated about the events, believing that the terrifying encounter with Urzel had been real.
It
had
to
be
real.
It
had
to
be.
Travers
is
dead.

A hair’s breadth

Deacon sat at his desk and carefully documented the events of his journey to Nix, his mind churning over the tragic loss of Travers. He’d felt a quiet camaraderie with this inoffensive Aralian, and the two of them had witnessed Urzel’s terrifying tirade on the mount. “Quobit,” he asked, “could you read this account and please add your observations and the events you experienced while we were separated?”

“Gladly. I am sorry for your loss, Deacon. On Jabu, it is our custom to pray over the dead body and pray that the afterlife of the spirit will exist in peace. Therefore, I shall say prayers over Travers shortly, but I will have to unbag the body. Will you join me?”