‘Shit,’ said Linda.
‘Shit indeed,’ said Ed as the ship became stationary and almost pitch black.
‘Hello, you still there?’ asked Ed.
‘Yes,’ said the ship.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Sentient Embryo 1048.’
‘My name’s Ed and this is Linda,’ he said, pointing at Linda in the darkness, then feeling a bit daft as no one could see his arm.
‘Gabriel told me about you. He’s taught me a lot since I was born yesterday.’
‘That’s good. Did he teach you what your main duties are?’
‘To protect life and serve my owners.’
‘That’s excellent. Can you scan us to confirm we are your owners?’
A dull red light swept through the cabin.
‘Edward Virr and Linda Wisnewski – confirmed.’
The lights came back on.
‘Where’s Andrew Faux?’
‘He’s remained on the Gabriel,’ answered Ed.
‘Oh, okay. Can I have a proper name? Gabriel told me you would name me when we first met.’
‘We don’t have time for this shit,’ said Linda, sitting back on the pilot’s couch with her hands behind her head.
‘Yes, of course you can have a name,’ said Ed, reaching across and squeezing Linda’s arm. ‘How about Cleopatra? Or Cleo for short?’ said Ed.
‘Cleopatra? Where did you get that name from?’
‘She was a very powerful female ruler from Earth’s history and you are a powerful ship,’ he said, keeping his fingers firmly crossed.
‘Cleo – I like it. I like it a lot – thank you, Edward.’
‘That’s okay, Cleo. We’re both very pleased to meet you, and welcome to your new home on the Cartella’ said Ed. ‘Now we all know who we are, is there any chance we could have control of our ship again as we were in a bit of a hurry.’
‘Sorry, Ed. Sorry, Linda,’ said Cleo and the ship powered back up.
‘Cleopatra?’ whispered Linda, rolling her eyes at Ed and accelerating the Cartella towards the planet again. ‘Another of your fantasy women, I presume.’
‘Jealous,’ said Ed, grinning, and receiving a smirk in return.
They managed to draw closer without looking suspicious and, ten minutes later, they watched as the convoy of trade shuttles entered the upper atmosphere, closely followed by the damaged GDA gunship.
For a while, everything seemed normal, until the gunship’s fiery insertion trail suddenly veered off course and became several fiery trails.
‘It’s breaking up,’ said Linda.
‘Ah, shit,’ said Ed. ‘There goes our last lead.’
Watching the new three-dimensional display in the centre of the cabin, they witnessed the gunship’s wreckage gradually burning up and disappearing.
‘That was a GDA Tyfonas Class, Mark 8 Gunship,’ said Cleo. ‘It’s a two-seater—’
‘What does it matter what it was?’ said Linda, an irritated expression creasing her face. ‘It’s gone now.’
‘—model and from the Mark 4 onwards,’ Cleo continued, ‘the crew cabin section had an insertion-capable lifeboat.’
‘I see where you’re going with this, Cleo,’ said Ed. ‘You’ve been studying hard since birth.’
‘I was born yesterday, you know,’ said Cleo. ‘That’s fifty hours to ingest one thousand four hundred trillion files. One more day and I’ll know as much as Gabriel.’
Ed and Linda raised their eyebrows at each other.
‘You are an amazing girl, Cleo,’ said Ed. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘Creep,’ muttered Linda.
A stunning representation of Cleopatra in all her glory appeared in the cabin, took a bow, winked at Ed, stuck her tongue out at Linda and disappeared again.
‘Cheeky cow,’ said Linda as she turned back to watch the last of the gunship burn up.
‘Ed, look.’ She pointed at the last section of the GDA ship, which was now reaching the lower atmosphere.
‘What am I looking at?’
‘That last lump of ship. It’s slowing.’
‘Well, it would,’ said Ed. ‘As the atmosphere gets thicker, it would—’
‘Not from Mach 27 down to Mach 1 in less than a minute, it wouldn’t.’
‘Ah – no – no, it wouldn’t.’
‘The Mark 8 lifeboat has a small automatic anti-gravity unit. It will land the unit in what it considers to be a flat and safe environment,’ said Cleo.
Linda smirked. She adjusted the angle of attack as they hit the upper atmosphere to ensure insertion over the point where the lifeboat was plummeting towards the surface and also cloaked the ship.
‘Cleo, can you create some local clothing for us please?’ said Ed. ‘Including hats to cover the POKs.’
‘No problem. Would you prefer hats that incorporate a POK?’
‘Cleo, you’re a legend already,’ said Ed, giving Linda a wink.
‘Creep,’ said Linda, again.
They followed the lifeboat down as fast as they could, gaining ground all the time until finally it slowed dramatically, slipped sideways to avoid a mountainous area and landed in a shallow rocky valley, near the equator.
Once it landed, Linda reduced the Cartella to under the speed of sound to avoid any sonic booms giving them away.
‘Any movement yet, Linda?’ said Ed as he donned the rather scruffy clothing Cleo had produced.
‘Nothing. Do you think they might be injured?’
‘It’s a possibility, although they might be playing the watch and wait game to see if they got away with it.’
Ed took over the Cartella, while Linda dressed in her local clothes with a rather underwhelmed expression on her face.
‘Shabby chic, eh?’ said Ed.
‘More like shabby homeless,’ said Linda, wrinkling her nose.
‘Hello. We have movement below.’
The canopy on the lifeboat that had once been the windscreen of the gunship had ejected. A single figure clambered out, looked around and then looked up. Once satisfied, he grabbed a bag from inside the lifeboat, rummaged in it, threw something back into the lifeboat and jogged off down the valley in the direction of the nearest Theo city.
‘Can you get a picture of him, Cleo?’ asked Ed.
‘No. He’s wearing full GDA battledress, including a helmet which obscures the face, sorry.’
‘Okay, he’s going to follow the valley down to the river and then follow the river to the city,’ said Ed. ‘So we need to set a trap further down and wait for him.’
‘There’s a path along the river over there,’ said Linda, pointing at the three-dimensional image projected in the middle of the cabin. ‘He’s bound to take it.’
Suddenly the lifeboat exploded and distributed flaming debris around the bottom of the valley.
‘Now we know what he threw back in before he left.’
‘Yep, someone wants to cover their tracks.’
The Cartella was down to a few thousand metres.
Ed slowed and requested the struts be extended. He kept the ship downwind to hide the antigrav drive noise from their prey, swept around in a wide arc and quickly landed in a small clearing, about three hundred metres from the path.
‘Cleo, when we leave, take the Cartella up to five thousand metres and watch and wait. Be ready to come back down fast, okay?’
‘Okay, Ed. No probs, mate, too easy.’
Ed and Linda exchanged a look.
‘Are we in Australia now?’ said Linda.
‘Perhaps she’s been learning English from an Aussie slang book,’ said Ed. ‘Although, I must say it does look like the Northern Territory here.’
‘You do know I can hear you, don’t you?’ said Cleo, sounding wounded, and then laughing.
‘She’s worse than Andy,’ said Linda.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, no one’s as annoying as him,’ said Ed, opening the airlock.
‘The radiation levels on this planet are higher than you’re used to so you need to be off the surface within six hours, okay?’ said Cleo.
‘No problem,’ said Linda.
They both grabbed an Exo stun gun, a hat and a shield egg, before jumping down into the long grass and began making their way over to the river path. The noise of the Cartella soon faded and the quiet of the valley enveloped them. Ed estimated they had about an hour to secure a good ambush point.
‘Is that rosemary I can smell?’ asked Linda as they walked.
‘Reminds me of a lamb joint in the oven,’ said Ed, realising he was quite hungry.
The crackle of the energy weapons came out of nowhere and Ed thought it was strange he couldn’t move and was suddenly lying on the ground.
It was also puzzling why Linda was asleep next to him.
Another crackle and he thought nothing more.