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  The men approached at the trot. If Murdoch gave a person a task to perform, it was best to obey on the instant. There were plenty more to take their place.

  “No weapons,” announced the one in front. “They’ve taken the lot and all the suitable vehicles from the hold. The engineering section is a mess. They’ve done something with the power-core as well, don’t know what.”

  “I didn’t expect anything else,” spat Murdoch. He had been right. They had abandoned them here to fend for themselves. He promised himself that revenge would come soon or his name wasn’t Elliot Murdoch.

  “They’ll have fled to the river,” he said. One of the first things Elliot Murdoch had done when he had woken was to demand a map of the surrounding area. “We must make plans.”

  With that pronouncement he turned and headed back towards the ship, fully intending to sleep well that night, ensconced in the Captain’s quarters he had appropriated for himself. They were spacious and comfortable. Not for him the narrow hard bed back in his cell. Murdoch fully intended to grasp all the luxuries he could on this world, luxuries that he had missed since that day when he had been arrested by the security police.

  Lying on the rumpled bed, he amused himself for a considerable time before he fell asleep looking through the rack of holos left by Captain Peter Howard and his family. One attractive looking female he noted in particular. Perhaps, she is a relation, his wife? Elliot Murdoch had been deprived of female company for so many years now that even the thought of a woman made his senses roar and his heart beat faster.

  * * * * *

  The convoy of trucks and other vehicles, carrying just under a thousand men, women and children, had reached a pleasant spot many miles north.

  They rested each night by the riverbank, the lapping of the waters lulling tension and frayed nerves. The youngest slept above ground inside the trucks and guards patrolled the perimeter.

  They had brought every weapon with them. The guards had their stunner batons, designed not to kill but to render the victim unconscious. One had to be within striking distance of the target for them to be of any use and they had unfortunately, a limited life-span outside the confines of the ship where they had been kept, when not in use, in the recharging slots in the guards’ ready room. The ship’s power had kept them in a constant state of readiness. They could not be recharged now. When their power was exhausted they would be of no more use than a large heavy stick. The knives and forks from the kitchen areas were being sharpened and other implements fabricated out of scavenged parts of the ship’s hull, lightweight and durable, these might well be of more use than anything else they possessed.

  Eighteen laser-rifles were in the hands of trustworthy ex-crew. The remaining two had gone with the away-team. Unlike the batons, these were lethal weapons and could and would be recharged using the portable solar panels housed in the trucks. These eighteen rifles were the only weapons that could fire a killing shaft of energy over large distances whether to defend against predators (of which none had been seen as yet) and the marauding convicts, but eighteen was not many to defend one thousand against twenty thousand. If, no, Camilla corrected herself, when it came down to it, they didn’t possess enough sustainable firepower to hold off these men. They would have to find another way and more importantly find someplace to defend. She had high hopes of reaching the hills in the north before it was too late. They should be able to find a defensible spot there. Her thoughts were grim as she did her rounds, checking the guard. Many of who she might loosely term non-combatants were arming themselves too. As Anne Howard prepared herself for bed each night she fingered the knife her husband Peter had given her before he left with the away-team.

  “Keep this with you at all times,” he had advised as he had planted a tender kiss of farewell on his wife’s forehead.

  She had looked at him, a questioning expression on her face.

  “Is the danger from these men that great?” she had asked nervously. “You’ll be back with us before the convicts find us won’t you?”

  His look had not been encouraging.

  Her eldest daughter, Jessica who was fourteen and could not be fobbed off without an explanation had questioned her mother about it as their truck had left the ship and during their journey to the hills. Anne told her the truth; there was no point in being evasive. She was both proud and distressed to see that by nightfall of the third day Jessica too had found herself a knife. The girl had explained to a worried Anne that she was keeping it thank you very much and felt much safer with it than without. Cherry and Joseph, being nine and seven respectively were considered too young for a weapon. Their need was not so paramount. Both Anne and her eldest daughter knew what would happen to them if they fell into convict hands. Most women in the convoy did as well and were taking precautions; most with their men-folk’s support; some without.

  All in all, it made for an uneasy journey.

  * * * * *

  EPISODE 5 - FORT

  The team of four who had volunteered for the task of burying the core were by now well on their way. Geophysical reports had indicated a suitable area east of the ship. Task complete, they would turn back and after dumping the ore driller a few miles away from the drill site, drive towards the rendezvous, some miles north of where the convoy was to begin its long riverbank trail towards the ocean and closer to the hills that could be viewed from where they were as a faint smudge on the horizon.

  After a hot and dusty journey (they recharged the vehicle batteries during the sunny daylight hours) they were approaching the designated grid reference. Looking round the arid and dusty landscape, Angus, the youngest in the team, decided that it was the most terrible place imaginable. As the majority of his life had been spent in the rarefied and protective atmosphere of the ship, he was finding life decidedly hard on the surface.

  “Worse than the filmdiscs,” he said in disgust.

  The three men looked at him.

  “I saw a film on the ship called Lawrence of Arabia,” he offered by way of explanation, “it was set centuries ago, in a desert, but this place is much worse. Surely the Sahara Desert on Earth isn’t like this? The heat’s unbearable.”

  The other three had ever been there so couldn’t answer. He rumbled away about the unfairness of it all, complaining about the intolerable heat and the dust for quite some time. His compatriots grew heartily sick of listening. It was one thing to have to cope with the journey, they were finding the going difficult as well, it was quite another to have to listen to someone complaining at the same time; all the time. Eventually Tom, their fourth member, not so politely told him to put a sock in it and give them all a bit of peace. Angus obeyed, but with a hundred and one grumbles.

  The engineer looked at his handheld and at his Captain, his voice muffled by the square of cloth which covered the lower part of his face as a protection against the dust that made breathing difficult, Johannes Pederson uttered the words they were waiting for.

  “This is it,” he announced. “Stop here.”

  Young Tom put his foot on the brake with a huge sigh of relief that the first and most difficult half of their journey was over. All four had taken their fair share of the driving. It was hard work, keeping the vehicle on course, the ore-driller bumping along behind, attached as it was by an improvised tow bar. They stopped at least once an hour to dig the driller and sometimes the jeep itself out of the sand. The driller was heavy and seemed to have a will of its own, successfully embedding its wheels in the soft sand on a regular basis and without a great deal of effort. Unfortunately it took a great deal of strength and effort to dig it out again.

  Finding their way across the desert was also difficult. In vain they had searched the ship’s databases for a program designed to aid navigation dirtside to no avail, not even in the little used historical data libraries. Eventually they had unearthed a twentieth century compass in a collection of old artefacts one of the junior engineers had been squirreling away since early childhood. It had proved
invaluable, without it there would have been no way they could have negotiated the featureless desert. The handhelds were only as good as they information they were programmed with and they had nothing in their memories on the topography of the planet. There were disadvantages of being brought up in a heavily technological society. One relied on the computers to do the work and old skills were forgotten. These would have to be re-learnt now. For the umpteenth time that day, Peter Howard checked the notebook where he had noted down the co-ordinates of their destination. It felt strange using these archaic methods like pen and paper.

  “We’ll rest until dawn,” announced Johannes. Peter nodded, he trusted the chief engineer’s judgement, problems would be more likely to occur if they tried to drill in the dark. Tomorrow, they could take the hours needed to set up the machine and drill the hole. Once the core was safely deposited and the hole filled in they would head back to their families and friends at top speed and much faster than during the journey outwards as the driller would not be careering along behind. They should make good time.

  The two young seamen who had volunteered for this duty set out their bedding and promptly fell asleep; to all intent and appearance without a care in the world. Not so their officers, who sat talking, wondering how the convoy was getting on, their conversation interspersed with comments about their families.

  By noon the next day the power-core was buried. The team was on their way to the rendezvous. Peter Howard still regretted the necessity of leaving his wife and family to do this but believed it was his duty as Captain to lead this dangerous and potentially fatal expedition into the unknown. Johannes Pederson had felt the same. The other two were volunteers and unmarried. The power-core was not as unstable as the old nuclear reactors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but it was very powerful and could still do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. Well, he reflected, it was done now for good or ill – he didn’t think even he could find it again. Now I can go back to Anne and the children.

  * * * * *

  Back at the ship, Elliot Murdoch had been very busy. His plans were laid; he would now carry them out. There were no dissenting voices when he told the men of his own block about what was to happen. He had expected none. He approached the prisoners incarcerated behind the security doors, informed them of what his orders were and left them to argue it out between themselves. They would realise that his proposal was the only one open to them and agree to follow him. He would then and only then, release them.

  His own men were arming themselves with knives and surplus batons and were appropriating the best of everything that they could find. Not for them the leftovers. They intended to be the leaders of the crowd, this army in the making. Excited and undisciplined as a result of their unexpected freedom they might be now, but over the following weeks Murdoch would mould them all into a disciplined force and one that would overrun the crew and in his own words, ‘make them pay’.

  There was the expected mayhem when the blocks emptied. The prepared food was almost gone by now and crowds of men began to strip the ship of anything edible. The fresh produce area containing the vegetables and nutrients was cleared within the hour. Murdoch and his men took charge of the remaining cattle. When they left for the river they would take them with them, an irreplaceable asset. His own men had orders to keep them safe from the ex-prisoners from the other blocks.

  They would hunt out the crew, however long it took and however far away. In the lush soil beside the river they would recuperate from their desert trek, it was not after all that far away, he had sent out scouts to take a look. The convoy’s tracks would be easy to follow and his plan was simple.

  He would catch up with the crew, kill the men and appropriate the women. He wanted a woman, a virile man, the enforced abstinence of his prison block on the ship over the last twelve years (and the six before that in the penitentiary on Moonbase Three) had almost driven him mad. He intended that it would not be long before he would take his pick of the most nubile and attractive. In the back of his mind he was remembering the holo in the Captain’s cabin on the ship. He stood there, thinking hard about the pleasures to come and rubbing his hands together with anticipation.

  * * * * *

  Miles away and to the northeast, Tom kicked at the back wheel of the jeep. The vehicle had stopped dead in its tracks and despite his best efforts was showing no signs of ever intending to move again. The dry, harsh climate had done its work well and the engine was damaged beyond repair. They would have to walk to the hills.

  “It’ll take us weeks to reach the rendezvous in this heat. We can’t take the direct route. Have to detour for water,” said Johannes in a gloomy voice, “they’ll not wait around for us either. Camilla will drive them on no matter what.”

  “I know,” replied Peter, “but she’ll activate the locator. We will be able to find them with the handheld. I vote we head straight for the hills, miss out the idea of the rendezvous entirely.”

  “As long as the handheld keeps recharging,” said Johannes. He seemed determined to look on the black side. “This blasted planet seems well designed to incapacitate our equipment.”

  “We’ll not switch it on until we get out of the desert,” answered his Captain, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “We’ll find them, never fret.”

  The engineer grunted. His wife and teenage daughter were part of the convoy and he was desperate to reach them. The two men were both wondering how their loved ones were faring.

  * * * * *

  The convoy had made good time and was camped in the low foothills of what was a fairly substantial mountain range. The desert may have been a dry and inhospitable place but the land beside the water (the river cut the mountains in half and through the centuries had cut a deep gorge) more than compensated. The summer season was by now well advanced.

  Although strange to their eyes after their lives on Earth and on the ship the countryside they were travelling through lightened their hearts. The grass was lush and teemed with miniscule life. Insects buzzed around. River ‘birds’ flew in the sky then dived into the water for ‘fish’. The birds had no feathers, being covered with a very fine downy fur, but were definitely birds for all that with huge narrow wings. Multi-coloured fish swam in the river and when tasted gingerly by those brave enough to do so, were succulent enough for them to ask for second helpings. The hills themselves, being higher than the desert possessed a light breeze that was pleasant. The blue flowers that covered the expanse of ochre grass held a sweet spicy tang. They saw no animals larger than a small squat rodent type and Camilla hoped that was not indicative of environmental stagnation.

  “The bigger animals will have headed away as soon as they sensed us,” Shelley Lambert reassured the older woman, “there were some dried out tracks and droppings at our last stopping place, I couldn’t say what kind of animals left the imprints but they were large.”

  “How large?”

  Shelley cupped her two hands together in a circle about the size of a horse’s hoof.

  Camilla’s eyebrows rose and she decided to double the perimeter guard that night. Better safe than sorry was an old space-fleet adage.

  “The scouts are returning!” called out an excited voice.

  With an apologetic smile at Shelley for deserting her, Camilla turned and walked towards the perimeter. She had sent the scouts in the direction of the west side of the gorge where in the distance she had spied a promising rock formation. It had looked as if it might be defensible from the distance, now was the moment of truth. If the spot were to be chosen it would mean crossing the swirling river but it would be worth it, one more hazard the convicts would need to deal with before they could reach them. She would use the vehicles as a makeshift bridge, then dispose of them on the other side. They could and would walk the rest.

  It was good news. The leading scout rider spurred his grey mare on towards her, his face one big beam of delight and accomplishment of a job well done.

  “Found the perfect p
lace,” he shouted as soon as he was within earshot. One or two of the guards pricked up their ears. The mare came to stop and the rider dismounted in one fluid movement that spoke of a lifetime spent with horses, “about two miles north of the crossing.” Both he and his mount steamed in the midday sun, they had swum across the river, it being too deep to ford with any ease. “There’s a corral for the animals.”

  Trust Gerry Russell to put the horses first, Camilla thought with a weary chuckle. He was nothing if not predictable.

  “And the humans?” she prompted.

  “Caves, plenty of trees, good water springs. A small tributary bisects the corral too.”

  “Defensible?”

  The man thought for a moment. “Absolutely. Lots of loose rocks. The summit can be made into quite a little fortress.”

  Camilla nodded. That might be enough.

  “We can be there by evening,” encouraged Gerry persuasively.

  “I’d certainly feel safer with the river between us and them. Perhaps we can make it before dark. We have to get the bridge built first though, drive the vehicles into the shallowest point then move everything and everybody across. On reflection, I think that if we can get across the water tonight that’s as much as we can hope for.”

  Gerry looked and felt disappointed. He had been so looking forward to showing them his ‘perfect place’ that very day, but, perhaps it would be better (and certainly safer) if they did it in two stages. The horses were tired and could do with a rest. He himself did not feel tired in the least. Gerry had recently entered his fourth decade, but most people who met him found this difficult to believe. His gentle boyish face had it seemed to those who knew him, never altered an iota since the day he had led the livestock up into the Electra twelve years before. At twenty, he had been the youngest qualified livestock handler in the fleet. He never appeared to put on an ounce of flesh either, no matter how much he ate.