Eugene Lambert - The Long Forever

I straighten up and let out the breath I’ve been holding.

‘Whatever happened, it was years ago.’

Murdo grunts. ‘Looks like it.’

‘Who d’you suppose did this?’ Cam asks.

‘How should I know? Cobb dealt with mean people. Maybe he crossed one of them. Only . . . he was no pushover. Not just anyone could come here and make this mess.’

Clearly gutted that we won’t be flogging our darkblende, he kicks out at some of the burnt wood.

‘Could ComSec have shut him down?’ I ask.

According to Murdo, Combine Security forces are the only law that reaches out this far from the Core worlds. He’s been telling us stories about his run-ins with them.

But he shakes his head. ‘Nah. That lot would take care of Cobb from orbit. There’d be nothing but a crater here.’

‘Shush!’ Ravi hisses. ‘Hear that?’

We all shut up and listen.

After a while, a clang of metal on metal comes from ahead of us, where warped and rusty girders stick up from the remains of what must once have been a warehouse.

‘Now would be a good time to leave,’ I say.

Murdo ignores me. Next thing he’s jogging towards the sound. Cam and Ravi sneer at me before following him. I curse, and hustle to catch up. One of the stone-arched entrances is still mostly standing, and somebody’s cleared a path through the rubble under it. Murdo swings wide, approaching it from the left side so he won’t be seen from within. He waits there until we’re all crouched beside him before sneaking a quick peek in.

Whatever he sees, he grunts and relaxes.

And then, before any of us can stop him, he’s striding through the archway, showing off his empty hands.

‘Hey there,’ he calls. ‘Can we have a word?’

Me and the other two lads swap uncertain looks, before leaping up to chase after him. We don’t get far though, because Murdo comes tearing out again . . .

Snapping at his heels is the weirdest creature I’ve ever seen. Way bigger than a bull fourhorn, its hide is mottled orange and six massively powerful legs drive it forward. At the end of a stupidly long neck, the thing’s head is no bigger than my fist. Lucky for Murdo, it’s being slowed down by hauling a long flatbed wagon. Perched on this, whipping the creature along, is a white-haired old man.

‘Hi-yah!’ he bellows, spit flying.

Murdo flings himself aside and rolls out of the way. Ravi scrambles left and clear, Cam and me dive right.

Creature and wagon thunder past us.

‘Don’t let him get away!’ Murdo yells, scrambling up.

How we’re to do this I don’t know. But now one of the wagon’s wheels clips a heap of debris it’s swerving round. Top-heavy and carrying too much speed it tips over and crashes on to its side, spilling a load of scavenged steel. Red dust boils up. Blaster in hand, I run towards it. At the front the unhappy creature is jammed between the pulling poles, snapping and making all sorts of hideous noises.

I’m sure scavver guy must have broken his old neck. But what do I know? He comes hobbling out of the dust.

‘Look whatcha done!’ he wails angrily.

Murdo curses and makes a show of knocking dirt off himself. ‘It’s your fraggin’ fault, you old fool. If you hadn’t tried to run us down, it wouldn’t have happened.’

The guy’s beast is full-on weird, but otherwise I’ve seen his like back in the Barrenlands. A shock of hair that might be white if it got washed. Straggly beard. Mouth full of broken teeth. Bent back. Calloused hands. Lined face and deep-sunk eyes that have seen too much hardship.

‘Didn’t mean to run you down,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t do that. Didn’t see you, did I? No.’

He squirms, like he doesn’t know how to stay still. Head tilted back, his watery eyes slide around strangely, never settling. I realise he’s blind, and a bit mad.

‘Relax. Nobody’s going to hurt you, old-timer,’ Murdo growls. ‘We just want to know what happened here.’

The man twitches. ‘Don’t know nothing ’bout that. I’m only a blind old scrapper who minds his own business. What I don’t know can’t hurt me, see.’

Murdo tries again, but gets the same answer.

Cam wanders over, a length of steel pipe in his hand. ‘I’ll make him talk, if you like.’

Murdo tells him to leave the guy be. ‘Maybe he doesn’t know. There’s a crewed maintenance platform near here, where they service the auto-loggers. We’ll drop in, load up on supplies and see what they have to say.’

Cam looks gutted. ‘The guy must know something.’

‘You heard Murdo, we’re out of here,’ I say.

Now if I was the old scavver, I’d keep quiet and be glad not to get my last few teeth kicked out for nearly running us down. But not this guy. He starts pleading with us to help him right his wagon. Murdo goes to shove him aside, but gets grabbed and whined at from close range.

Nasty, with all that spit flying.

‘All right, all right!’

With its heavy load shed and using a length of timber as a lever, the wagon is soon back on its wheels. It seems no worse for its crash. Neither does the beast. It heaves itself up and very nearly gets a mouthful of Ravi.

We leave the scrap metal where it fell though.

‘He loaded it once, he can load it again,’ Murdo says.

The old scavver feels his way slowly round the wagon, like he can’t believe we did it. He mumbles to himself too, that we ‘ain’t Syndicate guys, and that’s for sure.’

We’re walking away, but I turn back.

‘Syndicate? What’s that?’

I tell Murdo what I overheard.

The guy licks his shrivelled lips, plainly wishing he’d kept his gob shut. And starts up again with his I’m-only-a-blind-old-scrapper-and-don’t-know-nothing routine.

‘These Syndicate guys, was it them who destroyed this place?’ Murdo gestures around at the devastation.

Dumb if you ask me, as the blind scavver can’t see him.

‘Don’t make us ask again!’ Cam snaps.

‘Okay, okay. It was the Syndicate. Who else? But you can’t tell anyone I told you. If word gets back to them –’

‘Relax. It won’t,’ Murdo says, waving at Cam to back off. ‘I’m an old friend of Cobb, the guy who owned this place. Don’t suppose you know what happened to him?’

The man grunts. ‘Dead. Like the rest.’

Takes a while, but Murdo eventually worms the full story out of the guy. An outfit calling itself the Syndicate has blasted and slaughtered its way to the top of the many criminal gangs operating in the Vulpes sector. They’d come calling and told Cobb he worked for them now. Cobb didn’t fancy that and had told them to go to hell.

‘Always was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch,’ Murdo says.

The scavver shrugs. ‘And now he’s a dead son-of-a-bitch. That’s what happens when you mess with them Syndicate guys. You want my advice? Steer well clear.’

We’re slogging back to our freighter when it hits me. ‘Hey, maybe Shanglo wasn’t a complete bust. We could flog the darkblende to this Syndicate mob.’

Murdo shoots me a glare like I’m the biggest gom ever.

‘And what if it’s their darkblende? You heard that scavver guy. They run pretty much everything now.’

‘Any other great ideas?’ Cam says, all mocking.

I go to snarl that we can ask our skinny prisoner, but remember in time that he’s light years behind us by now, frozen inside the jettisoned escape pod with his gobby mate.

8

BLAST FROM THE PAST

With riches at stake, Murdo doesn’t give up easy.

Over the next few days we set down on three more worlds. On the first his contact had been taken out like Cobb. The second made no bones about working for the Syndicate now and wanted nothing to do with our darkblende, just in case. On the third world his contact had done a runner. Frustrating as hell, but it’s not all bad. We’ve been able to buy supplies and fill our aching bellies. Anuk had him load us up on working clothes too so we’ve ditched our ident-camp rags and look less out of place. Money is called creds out here too, but there’s no minted coins like on the Wrath, only numbers stored in weird little plastic devices. You scan the creds on and off. We scavved some off the freighter’s old crew and Murdo knew how to use them.