Authors: Neal Asher
Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Space Opera, #Fiction
“Get him to come fit this back in its box. We’ll have to go back for another one.”
“Should’ve brought two,” Hynd muttered as the door closed behind him, but Madsen heard.
“Three,” he shouted at the door. “ ’Member who made them.”
He snorted again, for the same reason as before. His personal hygiene was not of the first quality. While he waited for Stockton, Madsen remembered that his scalp itched. He scratched it—an event he had been saving, as a treat, for just such a moment. White flakes flew around his head and settled on the workbench, where they were camouflaged by dust.
Stockton came in, still buttoning his fly, and, at a nod from Madsen in the direction of the workbench, commenced unpacking and re-packing the drone. Like Hynd, he was of average build with regular and not unpleasant features, but there was something not right about him. He had tastes he couldn’t share with real people, so he kept them to himself; and made frequent visits to the toilet. His colleagues often said he might have been Outsider material. He had all the required deviances and loner tendencies, and lacked only the talent.
Second time round, the drone still didn’t fit. Part of its nose with the malfunctioning optic—if it had
really
been a bat, it would be part of its head with the left eye hanging out—refused to go in the carrycase. Stockton was about to start again, but Madsen couldn’t face the tedium.
“Oh, leave it. Tell Hynd, take the groundcar and bring another one…No, tell him bring another three.”
“Another
three
, Sergeant?”
“He’ll understand.”
Stockton went out. A moment later he was back.
“Sergeant, you’d better come and see this.”
He got up, at first wearily; then, seeing Stockton’s face, he straightened, hurried to the open doorway, and stood, with Hynd and Stockton, gaping at the figure which stumbled down the incline towards them. A slight, dark figure.
“He needs help,” Stockton pronounced.
“Oh, you think?” Madsen roared, and ran towards the figure, the others following. The figure bumped into the groundcar which stood directly in its way—still trying to keep a straight line—and continued, and when they reached it, it did not fall into their arms, or fall down, but stood before them swaying.
Sarabt was still wearing his Commonwealth officer’s uniform, but only the top half. Below his waist he was naked. Madsen smelt, then saw, the bloody ruins hanging from his lower abdomen and between his legs.
“Oh, you poor bastard,” he said, “you were pregnant, weren’t you?” He took Sarabt by the shoulders and gently lowered him to the ground. The secondary eyelids were flicking horizontally, and the mouth worked soundlessly, but his thin face held no expression.
“Mmmmmmmmm,” Sarabt said, and “Ssssssssssssss.”
“Later,” Madsen said. “Rest. Rest is best.” He turned to Stockton, who was already rushing back to the shed, and shouted “Tell Command to get a medical team here,
now!
Sakhran survivor of
Pallas
, premature childbirth, can’t be moved.”
The smell from between Sarabt’s legs was shocking, even to Madsen, but Madsen stayed with him.
He lost it
, he said to himself,
it died. Probably buried it out there, they do when they lose them, they bury them immediately. Along with their name and their past and their future.
Now that Sarabt had stopped moving, flies were circling thickly around the area between his legs. Madsen went to cover him with his jacket, then thought better of it; better not touch or cover any injuries before help arrived. Instead he began waving his hands a few inches above the injured area, just to disperse the flies. He thought how strange it would look to Stockton if he returned; to Stockton, of all people.
Stockton returned just then, but was too preoccupied to notice.
“Mmmmmmmmmm,” Sarabt said again, and “Ssssssssssss.” It was no use. The words stayed inside him. His lips wouldn’t shape them.
“They’re on the way,” Stockton said. Madsen nodded.
Stockton brought a cup of water. Madsen propped Sarabt in his arms so he could take it. He accepted it gratefully, though he spilt most of it; the cup was too big for his narrow carnivore’s mouth.
He seemed to be more comfortable propped up in Madsen’s arms, so Madsen stayed holding him, with the other two sitting close by in the dust. Arranged thus, they waited for help to arrive. His smell had got worse—Sakhran blood had a smell which humans found unendurable—but they stayed with him.
The medical team arrived in two fliers which landed vertically nearby, but there were also at least eight others which continued overhead and into the desert, in the direction from which Sarabt came. Madsen remembered the drone and exchanged a weary glance with Hynd.
An hour later he started talking, though he was incomprehensible to any but the Sakhran doctors with the medical team. One of them turned to Madsen.
“Sergeant, he keeps saying he wants you to put in a call to Thahl.”
“Get the location. Stockton’ll do it, won’t you?”
“He means,” the Sakhran said, “the First Officer on the
Charles Manson.
”
“Oh, shit.”
Not even ordinary warships would take non-military calls when they were on a mission: custom, as well as regulations, forbade it absolutely. Outsider Class ships, like the
Charles Manson
, were the most unreachable of all. Officially, they were almost nonexistent.
“I’ll fix it, Sergeant” Stockton said quietly. “I’ll get the
Charles Manson
for him.”
And somehow he did.
***
“Commander,” Thahl said, “I’ve been told I have an urgent personal call. May I take it?”
Foord raised an eyebrow—a gesture missed by most of those on the Bridge because of the soft lighting, though Thahl noted it—and said “Yes, of course. Do you wish to take it privately?”
“No thank you, Commander, I’ll take it here.”
He spoke softly into his comm, nodded, and waited. No call came through. A couple of minutes passed. The soft lighting seemed to darken, as if the Bridge had its own artificial summer evening. It turned almost to twilight. Movements flickered discreetly round its edges, and low nuanced voices murmured.
No call came. Sarabt had died before they could connect him.