The Edge - the farthest solar system of the civilized galaxy. Its one inhabitable planet, Tallyra, is unconventional, ungovernable an teeming with crooks - and it's where young Jaxie Cade heads when he breaks jail with stolen information that could lead him to the fabled Phantom Planet, the dream of every Edge-worlder... But trouble is right behind Cade: trouble from the alien Occians, from whom Cade stole the information; and from Raishe - a bounty-hunter and combat-ace determined to drag Cade back to prison. And that's before the Commonwealth Intelligence Agency turns up - or the evil, mysterious criminal, Acs, takes a hand...
Release date:
September 30, 2014
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
189
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If this is an open prison, Cade thought, lead me to a closed one. Like one of those olden-day dungeons – cool and damp and peaceful …
He prodded glumly with his fend-spear at the powdery blue dust ahead of him, watching it swirl and settle, aware that he had thought the same thing every day since he had been sentenced. And that there were all too many days ahead when he would be thinking it again. Lifting his gaze, he stared out over the blue desert that stretched to the horizon, its barren emptiness offering a perfect image of the confinement that also stretched before him.
The desert covered most of a large island on a planet named Breell. Decades before, after humans had colonized Breell, they had built a prison – an open prison – on one corner of the island. Inevitably, a time had come when it needed expanding. But it could only be expanded outwards, on to the desert, which meant that the blue barrenness had to be tamed and reclaimed. To begin that work, a labour force had been created from the convict population already on the island.
The convicts knew very well why they had been chosen. The desert was highly dangerous – and they were wholly expendable.
Cade had heard plenty of stories about people who had tried to escape from the prison, over the years, by trying to cross the desert. Those who had survived thirst and heat-stroke, and the hostile life-forms that lived their alien lives on or under the blue sand, had in the end been halted at the island’s edge by the barrier of Breell’s burningly acid sea.
A very open prison, Cade thought. Because there are so many ways open to you to get killed …
‘Pay heed, pinch-face!’
The harsh throaty growl came from one side, making him jump. But he made no reply, since he was used to both the heavily accented voice and the hostility behind it. He merely glanced warily at the tall inhuman being who was also probing with a fend-spear at the blue dust, while glaring at Cade for letting his attention wander.
The alien, properly called an Occian, was more or less humanoid, lean and stringy with a broad head, wide mouth and bulging eyes. His greyish skin was thick, ridged and blotchy, and there was a slight webbing between the bony fingers. The Occians were amphibious, and so had been nicknamed ‘Phibs’ – a numerous, aggressive species who from the beginning of star-travel had clashed with the numerous and aggressive human expansion. More decades earlier, that clash had sparked a short but costly war between humans and Occians, after which the Human Commonwealth and the Occian Unity had begun a continuing period of total separation, wary competition and intense mutual dislike.
The dislike operated as intensely among individuals as well, perhaps especially in a prison. Cade certainly had no great liking for Phibs, nor – usually – much interest in them. And yet, ever since the desert work had begun, Cade had made every effort to be teamed up as often as possible with that particular Occian prisoner for each day’s work.
He had done so because he knew that, somewhere on its reptilian person, that particular Occian carried a mysterious object that the alien believed to be hugely valuable, perhaps priceless.
Cade knew all that because each night, when the labour force had been taken back to their quarters in the main, original prison, that Occian – surrounded by the two or three other Phib prisoners, keeping apart from humans as always – brought out the object and gloated over it. With Cade eavesdropping intently, while never showing the smallest sign that, unusually for a human, he had some grasp of the Occian language.
Ever since he had first overheard one of those gloating sessions, the unknown object had dominated Cade’s yearnings and daydreams – along with an assortment of fantasies about escape. But then, such dreams had always been what had kept Cade going – and getting into trouble …
He was a young man, nearly twenty human years old – not tall but well-built, solid and springy, trimmed down to leanness by poor food and desert labour. Prison rules required his curly brown hair to be shorter than he liked, just as they required him and the others in the working group to wear shapeless reflecting robes as protection against the fierce desert sun. Within the robe’s hood Cade’s face was boyishly good-looking, almost cherubic, with clear blue eyes and a ready smile that could be cheeky or cheerful or charming as the need arose.
His charm, and his appearance generally, had served him well on many worlds, in many different and seldom legal enterprises. Along with some other useful skills, it had helped him to live reasonably well much of the time, and otherwise to stay clear of various forms of law enforcement that became aware of him. Even after he had slipped up and been caught, on Breell, he had been able to win over some of the guards, and so to wheedle a number of favours – including that regular pairing with the Occian who owned the secret and valuable thing.
But no amount of human charm could hope to overcome the deep-rooted suspicion and aggressive hostility of an Occian. So all Cade could do, every day, was look longingly at the loose wrinkly skin of the Occian’s throat – where an internal storage sac contained the valuable thing – and dream his unlikely dreams.
‘Move, weak-skin!’ the Occian snarled.
Cade jumped slightly again, realizing that he had stopped in his tracks and was staring all too obviously at the alien’s throat. But the Phib had not seemed to notice – shuffling forward, muttering and growling as he probed the dust with the fend-spear. His mutterings, in Occian, expressed remarkably obscene views of Cade’s ancestry, but as usual Cade’s face betrayed not the tiniest hint that he understood. He merely pushed forward as well, wielding his own spear.
About thirty other robed and hooded convicts were spread out over the desert in a broad wavery arc, doing the same thing, stolidly watched by half-a-dozen guards. All the workers were nearly knee-deep in the blue dust, their legs armoured with thigh-high ceramalloy boots against burrowing creatures lurking beneath the desert surface. The fend-spears that they carried, useless as weapons, resembled long oversized forks whose prongs emitted mild electroblasts that distressed the desert life-forms enough to force them to the surface. Then the guards would stun them with real weapons – electroguns called rattlers, firing a focused blast that could temporarily knock out most nervous systems. And the stunned life-forms would be taken away to be humanely dealt with elsewhere.
At least, that was the theory. But the protective boots did not always protect, and the guards were not always alert or quick enough. Cade had already seen two prisoners badly hurt by big, furious dust-eels that spat pellets of their own poisonous dung, and had himself once been barely quick enough to avoid a whipping, venomous tendril from a mobile spine-vine. And, he thought darkly as he shuffled forward next to the Occian, the odds are getting worse with every step I take.
Even as that thought formed, it seemed for an instant that his luck had finally run out – for a terrible eerie howling suddenly filled the desert air all around him. But he recognized the howl almost at once, and reacted to it in the same way as all the other convict workers. Tucking the handle of his fend-spear under his arm, he drew his hood tightly around his face and clamped his hands over his ears.
Even then the howling grew nearly painful as a stubby-winged aircraft settled down towards the ground in a raging, choking tornado of blue dust. It landed slightly ahead of the prisoners and to one side, so that Cade and the Occian were nearest to it. And Cade peered through the dust at it with some curiosity, since it was one of the shuttles that carried the labour force back and forth from the main prison to the desert. It’s too early, he thought, frowning. Where are they taking us now?
But then, as the dust settled, he saw that the shuttle was not taking but bringing. When the hatch opened, three convicts in robes and alloy boots clambered out, followed by a watchful guard with a rattler – and then by the shuttle pilot, who peered around with interest, showing that he had never made the desert run before. Enjoying the break in routine, Cade watched as the new prisoners were herded over to the other guards who had gathered to receive them. All the prisoners in the labour force had also stopped work to watch, their fend-spears idle. Even the particular Occian who was paired with Cade was watching, growling faintly as if annoyed by the human activity.
In that still moment, without warning, the Occian’s growl expanded into a shrill and shocking scream of agony – when from the sand at his feet the writhing tangle of a big spine-vine burst out and flung a tendril like a thorny whip around the Occian’s unprotected wrist.
And the scream was still in its first microsecond when Cade saw, in his mind’s eye, unexpected but perfectly clear, a step-by-step plan of exactly what he was going to do.
The alien began to fall, his scream cut off as the vine’s poison stunned and paralysed him. And the unconscious alien body had barely hit the ground when Cade jabbed at the vine with his spear to drive it back, then reached down, pried open the Occian’s mouth and thrust his hand into the slightly slimy throat. There, in the bulge of the storage sac, his fumbling fingers closed on a small flat ovoid that felt like plastic, and he jerked it out with a triumphant grin.
Tucking the ovoid into a boot-top, he sprang to his feet. Only seconds had passed since the Occian’s scream, and everyone else was only beginning to react – the guards starting to rush forward, the Occian prisoners starting to howl in outrage as they saw the theft. By then, also, the spine-vine had begun to burrow back into the sand. But Cade was still moving at full speed, still seeing his plan of action laid out in his mind as if he had been working on it for a year.
Plunging his spear into the sand under the vine, he scooped it up, straining a little under its weight, dodging a trailing tendril – then used the spear’s long handle like a lever to swing the vine up into the air, and throw it. It hurtled away in a curving arc, tendrils thrashing, aimed at the group of guards rushing towards Cade. Yelling in alarm, the guards scattered, stumbling in the powdery sand as they desperately tried to avoid the deadly thorns.
With that head start, Cade sprinted away. Towards the shuttle.
The pilot was still standing by the open hatch, gaping and bewildered. Unaware that the fend-spear was harmless, he shied back as Cade threatened him with its prongs. And then Cade tossed the spear aside and leaped into the ship, slapping a hand on to the switch that closed the hatch just as the first ill-aimed bursts from the guards’ rattlers hissed around him.
Flinging himself into the pilot’s seat at the shuttle controls, Cade grinned at the familiar, mo. . .
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