Bent gasped. Clutching his chest, he staggered back into his seat and gasped weakly.
"Bent, what is it?" shouted Lurk in alarm. He ran across the floor of the cargo bay and sat at the old man's side. "Are you okay?"
"I felt a great disturbance in the Source, as though millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly deleted." He shook his head. "I fear something terrible has happened. I hate it when I'm right." He gazed blankly through Lurk for a moment, regaining his strength. Then he blinked, and refocussed on the lad.
"You felt nothing?" he asked.
Lurk shook his head.
"You are powerful, young Splitwhisker, but you still have much to learn. You can manipulate the Source, but you are not as one with it."
"But aren't I 'The One'?" asked Lurk. "What does that mean, anyway?"
"Being 'The One' and being 'as one' are not the same, Lurk," said Bent. He paused a moment to regroup his thoughts. "Do you remember what I told you about the man who founded the Jubbly Order?" he asked.
"You said he was the first person to become aware of the Source, and to be able to manipulate it."
"Indeed I did," said Bent. "But he was more powerful than the other members of the Jubbly Order. His followers learned to manipulate the Source, but none could go as deeply as he could. As you can." He stroked his straggly beard thoughtfully. "Before he died, he prophesied that one day 'The One' would return. He prophesied that a child would be born with his power, and that that child would bring balance to the Source."
"And you think I am that child?" asked Lurk.
Bent nodded.
"I wasn't sure. There was some confusion surrounding the details of the prophecy and, well, for a while we thought your father was the Chosen One."
"My father?" said Lurk. "Mannequin? Barth Vapour?"
Bent nodded sadly.
"Well, how do you know he isn't the Chosen One?" said Lurk.
"What?" said Bent. "Well, because he went over to the Hard Side."
Lurk thought about this. "How many Stiff Lords are there?" he asked.
"Two," said Bent. "Always there are two. A master and his apprentice. By their very nature they are unable to form large groups without killing each other."
"And how many Jubblies are there?"
"At the moment?" asked Bent. "Only a couple survive. Myself, and old Master Yodel." He shook his head sadly. "Before the hard times, before the Imperium, we numbered in the thousands. As I told you, Barth Vapour helped the Imperator to hunt most of them down." He looked at Lurk. "Where are you going with this?"
"Well, it seems to me," said Lurk, "that Vapour did bring balance to the Source. The Jubblies had the upper hand, but now the Jubblies and the Stiff are evenly matched."
Bent gaped at him.
"But..." He stroked his beard idly as his mind followed that thought to its conclusion.
"Bugger," he said at last.
"Bent?"
"You could be right, Lurk," said Bent. "You know, we were so focussed on balance being a good thing that we never considered that we were already in front."
"So does that mean I am not the Chosen One after all?" said Lurk.
"I don't know," said Bent. "I think that is a question we will have to ask Yodel sometime. All the evidence suggests that you are indeed 'The One'—Vapour's power never extended as far as yours has, and you are still untrained—but if what you say is right, it would appear that he was the Chosen One. We always thought the two titles referred to the same person; perhaps that was our biggest mistake."
Lurk was about to say something more when Mal's voice echoed through the cargo bay over the intercom.
"You two should get up here," he said. "We are coming up on Alderbark now."
Bent pushed himself wearily to his feet. "Come on, Lurk," he said. "We can finish our discussion once we're safely on Alderbark." Lurk followed the old Jubbly Knight up the steps and through the lounge towards the flight deck.
Suddenly the Serendipity Sparrow lurched violently, and a loud bang echoed throughout the ship. Lurk sprinted ahead and into the flight deck, just in time to hear Mal cursing vehemently in a foreign language.
"What is it?" he yelled as he sat in one of the empty seats and buckled himself in. Moments later Bent joined them and settled himself into another seat.
"We've come out of hyperlight speed into the middle of a meteor shower," said Mal. Beside him in the co-pilot's chair, Shaggus grunted in frustration.
"It's not on any of the charts," Mal said. "Speaking of charts..." He began to tap buttons frantically on his console, comparing visible star patterns with his navigation database. "Damn," he said.
"What..." began Lurk, but was cut short as Mal jerked the rudder hard over to avoid a large lump of rock that tumbled past them.
"We're in the right place," said Mal, "but there's no Alderbark."
"What?" said Lurk. "How could an entire planet be missing? Are you sure you're reading that thing right?"
Under other circumstances, Mal might have taken exception to such a rude question, but he was feeling more than a little unsettled. "I'm telling you, kid, we're in the right place. But no Alderbark. Correction, I think this meteor shower is what's left of Alderbark. It's been totally blown away."
"But that's impossible," exclaimed Lurk. "An entire fleet of Planetary Dominators wouldn't have enough firepower to do this to a planet. Now perhaps if they were called 'Star Destroyers' or something, it might be imaginable, but..."
He was cut off as an alarm began beeping and flashing on the console. The Sparrow rocked again—the unmistakable impact of weapon fire—and then a lone THIGH Fighter swept past overhead and took the lead, the characteristic roaring hum of its gravitational repulsors going completely unheard in the airless void of space.
Mal immediately accelerated after the Fighter. "Shaggus," he said, "take the Fore gun port."
The Woonky grunted acknowledgement and trotted off the flight deck.
"Where did that come from?" asked Lurk. "Did it follow us from Ratatouille?"
"No," said Bent. "No Fighter that small has hyperlight engines."
"It must have come from a ship around here," said Mal.
"Won't it report us?" asked Lurk.
"Nope," said Mal. "So long as I can keep up with it I can jam its transmissions; and as soon as Shaggus gets a lock on it, it will be nothing but a memory."
"It looks like it's heading for that small moon," said Lurk. He pointed ahead.
There was a moment's silence.
"That's no moon," said Bent. "It's a space station."
"What?" said Lurk. "It's too big to be a space station."
"I think the old man might be right," said Mal. "When was the last time you saw a cylindrical moon?"
Lurk looked closer. "Oh," he said.
"I have a bad feeling about this," said Mal.
"Forget the Fighter," said Bent. "Get us out of here."
"I think you're right," said Mal. The fighter began to draw away from them as Mal threw the engines into full reverse. They screamed in protest at this harsh treatment.
"Why are we still moving forward?" screamed Lurk.
"Momentum, mostly," snapped Mal. He tapped one of the readouts on the console, and frowned. "And it looks like they've locked an attractor beam on us. Well, they're not gonna get me without a fight."
Bent leaned forward and placed a calming hand on Mal's arm. "Power the engines down," he said. "There is a time for fighting, and this is not that time. It is a fight that I do not think that we can win."
Mal paused a second, then shut off power to the engines. He had no choice anyway; they would have torn the ship apart if he had persisted. "What do you have in mind?"
"I'm sure we can come up with an alternative, Captain."
First Lieutenant Nummalarandrajah Nuttarumbalum was on patrol.
NumNut had a terrible hangover. He had already been drinking for several hours before he had met up with his old buddy Joe, and consequently he had not had enough sleep before having to report for duty. His head was pounding, and—genetically modified or not—being inside the shifting high-grav field of his THIGH Fighter's cockpit really wasn't helping.
He had watched as the Devastator Station had oriented itself with the distant planet; he had watched as its front end had irised open, revealing what was essentially the gargantuan barrel of the largest laser weapon in the galaxy. He had watched as the energy blast reduced the planet to so much rubble, and he had rapidly taken shelter behind the bulk of the Station as the debris exploded outwards. The Station's own shields and defence systems had taken care of most of the projectiles that headed its way.
And now he was flying a huge looping patrol pattern around the space behind the Station, and nursing the headache from Hell.
"THIGH Seven Eight One Zero Three Bee," crackled his comm, "please acknowledge."
"This is THIGH-78103b," said NumNut. "Go ahead, THIGH Control. What are your orders?"
"THIGH-78103b, please check your internal sensors. Our telemetry shows a fluctuation on your gravimetric controller of six percent beyond acceptable parameters."
"Please hold, THIGH Control. Checking." NumNut keyed off the comm, and groaned. In his current state he was barely capable of wiping bird shit off the windscreen—assuming there had been any birds in space capable of making such a deposit—let alone analyse the diagnostic readouts of his gravimetric controllers. Wincing, he tapped the keys on his console slowly. Diagnostics. Gravimetrics. Proceed.
"THIGH-78103b, is there a problem?"
"Still, uh, still collating," said NumNut carefully. He had no idea what the word meant, but somebody had once told him it was a good word to use when you had no clue what you were looking at.
The results flashed onscreen. He stared at them stupidly. 794.3 Gravitrons. What was the figure supposed to be? He had no idea.
"Uh," he keyed the comm. "Uh, THIGH-78103b to THIGH Control."
"Go ahead, THIGH-78103b."
"Uh, confirmed, Control. I'm reading 5.9% outside of acceptable limits." Rule number one of lying to one's superiors: do it confidently and convincingly! And if possible, tell them almost what they were expecting to hear.
"Return to base, THIGH-78103b. We'll send out a replacement patrol while we look your ship over. Control out."
"Acknowledged, Control."
Well, thought NumNut, that worked out better than I could have hoped! Perhaps I'll get some sleep today after all.
He swung the THIGH Fighter around in a tight loop and set course for the distant speck that was the Devastator. His navigation computer identified a loose cluster of planetary debris in his path, and he adjusted his course slightly to take him through the centre of the cluster; it was a manoeuvre that would no doubt be frowned upon by THIGH Control, but even with his hangover, the lure of the cheap thrill was too strong to ignore.
Suddenly the strident alarm of his Fighter's collision alert sounded. He barely had time to wonder what had set it off—the meteors were nowhere near close enough yet—when a battered old freighter dropped out of hyperlight drive directly in his path and decelerated to a speed substantially slower than his own; for it to appear there it must have actually warped through his ship in the final moments of hyperlight. NumNut felt his skin crawl. He had seen that happen once—one ship materialising inside another—and it had not been pretty.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. NumNut's engineered reflexes had taken over. He took evasive action, narrowly missing the huge throbbing engine pod of the old ship as his Fighter skimmed up over its rear end and went into a 360 degree loop.
Fast as his reactions had been, his combat computer's analysis of the situation was faster still. As he dropped back in behind the freighter, his targeting reticle flashed green. The freighter was identified as a possibly hostile fugitive from Imperial justice.
"THIGH-78103b, we are in receipt of your transmission," said THIGH Control. NumNut knew that the combat computer would have tight-beamed the identification back to the Devastator the instant it had been made. "Please stand by."
NumNut dropped back slightly as the freighter collided with one of the rocks from the debris cluster.
"THIGH-78103b, please acknowledge."
"Go ahead, THIGH Control," said NumNut. He hugged the freighter's tail as it took an evasive path through the cluster.
"Suspect vessel is classified Most Wanted. Get their attention, and lead them in to the Devastator. Do not target any vital systems; Lord Vapour himself wants this vessel captured whole."
"Confirmed, THIGH Control. No damage to vital systems. Lead them in." NumNut sighed. He hated acting as bait.
Switching his Fighter's weapons to half-strength, NumNut accelerated over the freighter's hull. He fired a couple of blasts along the top of the hull, then streaked past them.
The freighter's pilot reacted quite quickly, for a Biggun. The ship gave chase, and NumNut modulated his own speed carefully to allow them to keep up. An electronic hiss filled his ears as they began jamming his comm systems, which was to be expected. He kept a wary eye on the combat computer's analysis of the ship, and he felt a nervous prickle run up his spine as one of the freighter's gun ports went active. He began weaving slightly back and forth, and hoped that their targeting computer was as old as the rest of the ship.
"I'm just glad I'm not in a 5730T," he said aloud to the universe at large.
Suddenly the freighter began to shudder and drop back. As the gap between them widened, the jamming hiss died.
"THIGH-78103b to THIGH Control," said NumNut.
"THIGH-78103b, this is THIGH Control. We have them. Well done."
"Thanks, THIGH Control."
"THIGH-78103b, proceed to Docking Tube T-109b as per previous instructions. Once docked, report for immediate debriefing."
"Roger that, THIGH Control," said NumNut. Immediate debriefing? Damn, he thought, there goes my nap!
The Great Muff Tarragon sat at the small conference room table, his fingers steepled in front of his chin. He appeared to be deep in thought. Across the table from him stood the Hard Lord of the Stiff, Barth Vapour. He paced back and forth like a caged predator.
Tarragon straightened in his chair.
"Baron to Queen's Palisade Three," he said. "Check."
Vapour leaned in to study the state of the game. "An interesting move," he said. "But predictable. Trooper to Knight's Retinue Seven."
Tarragon's eyes narrowed. "What are you up to?" he mused.
The conference room speaker chirped for attention. Tarragon tapped the button. "Yes, what is it?"
"Sir, our advance scouts have reported back from Dentakleen. There are signs of a Rebel base, but it has been deserted for some time."
"She lied to us!" said Tarragon. "She lied to me! That bitch!"
"As you said," said Vapour snidely, "she will never knowingly betray the Rebellion."
"The sooner we execute the stubborn cow, the better," said Tarragon.
The speaker chirped again, and Tarragon jabbed a finger angrily at the button.
"Yes? Now what?"
"Uh, sir, we have just intercepted and captured a freighter which entered the Alderbark system. It matches the description of the suspect freighter which blasted its way out of Ratatouille earlier today."
"The missing plans," said Vapour quietly. "Perhaps they are trying to return them to the Princess. She may yet be of some use to us."
"I agree," said Tarragon. "I do hope she hasn't been executed yet?"
"Scheduled for tonight, I believe," said Vapour.
Tarragon tapped the comm button again. "Cancel the execution order for Princess Labia," he said. "And conduct a thorough search of that ship."
"Yes sir."
"Do you feel lucky?" asked Vapour.
"Why?" asked Tarragon.
"I have a cunning plan, my Lord," said Vapour.
The Serendipity Sparrow looked out of place in the middle of the polished cleanliness of the Devastator Station docking bay in which she rested.
Barth Vapour strode towards the ungainly ship, an Imperial Captain scurrying to keep up with him. As they drew near to the freighter, another officer marched down the ramp to meet them, followed by two squads of armoured Shock Troopers.
"My Lord," said the officer, "there is nobody on board. According to the log the crew abandoned ship right after takeoff. Both of the ship's shuttles have been launched. It must be a decoy, my Lord, although to what purpose I cannot imagine."
"Were there any 'bots?" asked Vapour.
"No sir," said the officer. "If there were any, they must have accompanied the crew in the shuttles."
Vapour looked up at the old ship. "What of the THIGH Pilot's report, Captain?" he said.
"Sir, the Pilot who intercepted the ship is certain that it was manned at the time." The captain consulted his electronic notepad. "He states that it accelerated to pursue him, initiated jamming of his comm system, and powered up its weapons. Furthermore, his claim that it attempted to break free from the attractor beam is confirmed by telemetry from Attractor Control; after the lock was achieved, additional resistance was felt as the ship's engines went into reverse before powering down."
Vapour nodded.
"Thank you, Captain," he said. "Is the scanning crew I selected ready to go on board?"
"Yes, my Lord," said the captain hesitantly.
"Is there a problem, Captain?" asked Vapour menacingly?
"Um, no, my Lord. Uh, it's just that..."
"Yes, Captain?"
"Well, my Lord, I'm sure that Team Buttercup are a fine squad of Shock Troopers, but might I suggest a more experienced..."
"No, Captain, you might not suggest."
"Yes, my Lord." The captain swallowed nervously.
"Now, send the scanning crew on board. I want every part of that ship checked. And Captain." Vapour leaned in close to the officer.
"Yes, my Lord?"
"I think you can pull the rest of your Troopers off of this guard duty. The remainder of Team Buttercup should be more than sufficient to man this post."
"Yes, my Lord. Of course, my Lord."
Vapour looked up at the ship again. "I sense a presence," he said, almost to himself. "A presence I've not felt since..." In a swirl of black cape, he turned and marched from the docking bay. The two squads of Troopers followed him, as did the two officers. As he reached the doorway, the captain nodded at the waiting Troopers and technicians from Team Buttercup.
A panel in the sloping side wall of the cargo bay slid aside, and Mal peered out cautiously. The coast was clear. As he clambered out of the small compartment, another panel slid open and Lurk peered out.
"Boy," said Lurk, "it's lucky you had these compartments."
"Yes," said Mal. "A thousand smugglers on the planet, and you just happened to find the only one with hidden compartments on his ship. That sure was a lucky break for you." He rolled his eyes at Shaggus, who was unrolling his lanky form from a third locker.
"Okay," said Lurk defensively. "No need to be mean about it." No doubt about it: after only three days with the 'bots in his life, his sarcasm detector was working just fine. He climbed out, then moved to help Bent come out of his closet.
The two 'bots were powered down and locked in a broom cupboard. Lurk was in the middle of reactivating them when they heard a loud metallic clang from the ship's ramp. He peered around a crate and studied the two un-armoured Imperials who were pushing a large floating scanning unit up the ramp. They had somehow managed to drop the scanner.
"Do you guys need a hand in there?" came an electronically distorted voice from somewhere outside the ship.
"No thanks, it's fine," called out one of the scanner techs. "Everything is under control." They powered the scanner unit up again, and pushed it to the top of the ramp, at which point Mal and Shaggus jumped them. Mal swung a piece of lead pipe against the head of one tech. The Woonky simply reached out a large furry hand, gripped the top of the other man's head, and twisted sharply. Both men, and the scanner unit, collapsed to the floor again.
"Uh, hey guys," Mal called down the ramp as Shaggus hurriedly dragged the bodies out of sight, "could you give us a hand in here?"
"I thought everything was fine?" called back one Trooper.
"Yeah," said the other, "you said everything was under control."
"Well, uh," said Mal, thinking fast, "we thought it was all good, but now we see that we really do need your help. Uh, we're sorry if we upset you."
"Damn techs," muttered one of the Troopers, "always thinking they're better than us."
"Yeah," said the other. "It's bad enough that we have to trial this new armour today—and it's not anywhere near as comfortable as the old stuff. Feels quite flimsy too. But having to nursemaid you two is the final straw!"
"Look, guys, we're really sorry if we gave that impression," said Mal. "We don't really think we're better than you. We're obviously not strong enough to push this scanner around. Please?"
"Okay," said the first Trooper, "but you guys are going to owe us. Come on."
The two Shock Troopers turned and marched up the ramp. Mal shot them both with his blaster from close range, and they clattered to the deck.
"Well, that's all very nice and all," said Lurk, "but won't they be missed?"
"Look," said Mal, "just get into that suit of armour and stop complaining!"
"And then what? There are only two suits, and four of us—and I doubt the Imperium had Woonkies in mind when they designed this armour."
"Just trust me," said Mal.
In situations like this, Mal preferred to react rather than plan. With so many things that could go wrong, he preferred to keep his options open. In other words, he was making it up as he went along.