The Fractured Void

by Tim Pratt

  “She opened the door. They’re talking. Should I intervene?”

  As long as Shelma didn’t say, “Ha ha, they’re firing you and hiring me,” what was the harm in letting them talk, really? Surely Shelma knew him well enough to avoid antagonizing him unnecessarily. Just then the connection clicked in, and Jhuri’s face filled the air over Felix’s desk.

  “Just keep watch, and if they start to argue, break them up,” Felix said.

  “I assume you aren’t talking to me,” Jhuri said.

  “Sorry, sir.” Felix closed the ship channel. “I have an issue I can’t resolve without exceeding my authority.” He explained, without getting into specifics that needed to stay deniable, that they’d “rescued” the “prisoner” – and that she was requesting certain assurances before she’d consent to work with the Coalition. He told Jhuri about the Ghosts, too – both the visit to the wormhole lab, and the stories Tib and Calred had shared.

  “Tell this Shelma whatever she needs to hear,” Jhuri said. “Tib Pelta can forge whatever documents are necessary.”

  Felix winced. “We can’t work with her in good faith?”

  “She’s an unwilling defector from the Barony, and by joining the Barony she already betrayed her homeworld. So, no. I’d say good faith seems rather inadvisable. If it’s any consolation, we’re on friendly terms with the Hylar, so it’s possible you’ll inadvertently tell her the truth.”

  “Ah. Right.” Felix didn’t like it, but he understood it. “But what about the Ghosts?”

  “Oh, what’s that thing you humans do, when you go spend the night in the woods for recreation?”

  “Er, have outdoor sex, sir?”

  “No, captain. I was thinking of campfire stories. I’ve heard variations of that disassembled space station story half a dozen times – sometimes the ambassadors are Yin, but sometimes they’re Naalu, and sometimes they’re us. As for the merchant and his deadly jewel, if you question Calred, I think you’ll find he heard it from a cousin’s cousin’s friend, and that curiously there’s no actual planet, let alone city or quarter, specified in the story. They’re legends, Felix, and I suspect Thales is just taking advantage of those legends for his own purposes. He probably screwed up an experiment and destroyed his own lab and blamed it on the Ghosts. He hasn’t been a paragon of honesty so far.”

  “That’s true, sir, but–”

  “But what?”

  But I am afraid of Ghosts, Felix thought. Which wasn’t something he could say to his superior. “Nothing, sir. How do you feel about us sidelining Thales in favor of Shelma?”

  “Get us working wormhole tech, captain, and no one will care how you did it. Assign your personnel however you see fit. But keep Thales around. Ideally, don’t let him know he’s been sidelined. You may still need him. Shelma wouldn’t be the first defector to overstate her own value.”

  “Yes, sir.” Felix had known, deep down, that getting rid of Thales completely was unlikely, but without hope, what did you have?

  He shut down the communication and answered a pulsing priority call from Calred. “What is it?”

  “It’s Shelma,” Calred said. “She’s having a seizure or something.”

  •••

  They didn’t have a ship’s doctor – the ship was the doctor, with an automated medical suite and a database filled with the data necessary to treat a variety of injuries and illnesses for all the species that lived in the Mentak Coalition, even the rare ones like the odd Ember of Muaat, male Naalu, unhived Sardak N’orr, or renegade Yin.

  By the time they wrestled Shelma’s clearly malfunctioning exo-suit tank into the sick bay, though, it was too late – she floated lifeless in her sustaining fluid like a specimen in a jar in a medical museum.

  Felix punched a wall, hurting his knuckle, then turned and pointed his finger at Calred. “What did Thales do to her?”

  Calred frowned, then pulled up security footage and sent it to the nearest screen. “Thales went to her door,” he said, narrating what Felix could see for himself. “She opened the door. He stood there talking to her for a while. She didn’t invite him in. After a couple of minutes, he left.”

  “What did they say?”

  Calred fiddled with his gauntlet, and the video started over again, this time with audio. “Are you excited to work together again?” Thales said.

  “You know I find the work interesting. I still have the same reservations I did last time, but the work itself seems inevitable, and the Coalition is no more objectionable than the Barony was.”

  “Just remember, Shelma, you’re working for me. I’m still the lead on this project.”

  “Ha.” Her tank bubbled. “I always let you think that, didn’t I?”

  They didn’t have a clear angle on Thales’s face, but Felix could sense his scowl. “Shelma–”

  “I’m tired, Phillip. Can we do this later?”

  “You know what has to happen next, Shelma. You know what we need. I saw your files. I saw the absence in your files. You came to the same conclusion I did.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Thales reached out, touching her above one of her suit’s manipulator arms – like a friendly hand on the shoulder, except nothing like that at all. “Yes, you do. You tried to obscure the problem, to hide it from the Letnev, but it’s a glaring hole in your otherwise thorough breakdown of the engineering problems. I’m talking about the power source, Shelma. There’s only one reason you’d omit mentioning the power source. You know there’s only one place we can get it. One place we can steal it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you have to steal something, it’s good you have a pirate crew on your side,” Shelma said.

  “It’s a shame you made such a mess of your job at the shipyard, or we could use your connections to get the source more easily.”

  “I was targeted by the Creuss–”

  “That’s your story, yes.” Felix could hear the man’s smirk. “I know the truth. You went back home and found they’d given your job away. You made a scene. They asked you to leave. Ghosts. Ha. The only ghost is your dead career–”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Shelma shut the door in his face, and Thales shrugged and walked away.

  Ugh. Had Shelma lied to Felix, too, or was this just more mind games from Thales? “Play it again,” Felix said. “No sound this time.” He watched, then said, “There. When Thales touches her. Did he do something? Put something on her armor? Insert something? Manipulate something?”

  “The resolution isn’t good enough to tell,” Calred said. “But if he did… A suit malfunction could have killed her, absolutely. The suit certainly isn’t working now – it doesn’t even turn on. Maybe her filtration system failed, or there was an electrical fault. I saw her spasming on the feed. We’ll have to see what the ship says after the autopsy.”

  “Thales killed her.” Felix was suddenly, absolutely, sure.

  “I don’t like the man any more than you do,” Tib said, “but why go to all that trouble to break Shelma out of the Barony station just to murder her?”

  “He’s got her files. He’s got her prototype. Maybe that’s all he needed.”

  Tib considered, then shrugged. “It’s possible, but it still seems like going the long way around. Stealing her files would have been much easier than stealing her, too.”

  “So let’s find out,” Felix said. “Take her body to the infirmary. Can the ship’s computer examine her and determine cause of death?”

  Calred said hmm. “Ships with bigger crews usually have a medical officer on board to handle such things, but I imagine the automated systems can do it, if I can figure out how to configure the tests. The results might take a while if the cause was something unusual, though.”

  “We’ve got time,” Felix said. “I’m going to talk to T
hales.”

  “Just talk, though, right?” Calred said. “We’re down to just the one wormhole scientist, and I think undersecretary Jhuri would be upset if someone gave him brain damage.”

  “I can control myself,” Felix said.

  •••

  “She’s dead,” Felix shouted. “We went to all that trouble to rescue her, when she didn’t even want rescuing, and now she’s dead!”

  “How regrettable.” Thales didn’t look up from tinkering with the prototype they’d taken from Shelma’s lab. “She was a capable engineer. Still, her death isn’t entirely tragic – it has certain clear advantages.”

  Felix had a bit of a temper as a teenager. He’d worked hard to get it under control and to channel his flashes of rage into energy to fuel his ambitions. This time, though, that energy was too much to contain. He flashed across the room, spun Thales around, and slammed him into the bulkhead, pinning the man against the wall by his throat. “You’re happy she’s dead?”

  Thales gurgled, and Felix eased his grip enough to let him talk. “I didn’t say I was happy, captain. I said there were advantages.” He tried to shove Felix away, but the captain didn’t budge. Thales exhaled heavily into Felix’s face, then said, “I realize the state of economic theory in the Mentak Coalition is primitive – that’s because you steal instead of actually producing anything of value – but in the rest of the galaxy, there’s a concept called ‘supply and demand.’ With Shelma gone, the supply of scientists capable of creating working wormhole technology has been reduced by half, while the demand remains constant. That means my value has doubled. I was already worth ten of you, Duval. Now I’m worth twenty.”

  Thales was remarkable, in his way. He’d insult you to your face while your hands were literally around his throat. Felix let him go and took a long step back, to reduce the temptation to strangle him some more. “With Shelma dead, you have a monopoly on wormhole technology? That’s your advantage?”

  Thales rubbed his throat and scowled. “It’s not a true monopoly, since the Creuss can do it too. But since they won’t sell their technology, they don’t matter much in practical terms. Otherwise, yes, of course. I couldn’t leave Shelma in the hands of the Letnev. She might have duplicated my work – with their resources, she might have gotten there first! Then where would we be? Being second to market just drives prices down. New technology is most advantageous when it’s asymmetric. If one faction can open wormholes, they can dominate the galaxy. If two can... there’s an old term for enemies who possess equally powerful technology: ‘mutually assured destruction.’ That kind of situation leads to gridlock, no progress, no winning. My technology is valuable because it’s unique.”

  “You didn’t need or want Shelma’s help. You just wanted to make sure she couldn’t help anyone else. You used me.”

  “You exist for me to use. That’s your purpose.” Thales went back to his work bench, apparently content that Felix was no longer a threat. “That’s why you were assigned to this mission. It’s true, I didn’t need Shelma, but she might have been helpful. I’d hoped to collaborate. She was hardly amenable, though. I’m sure you saw our conversation. Her death is a setback, and a shame, but it’s not insurmountable.”

  “I know you killed her, Thales. You murdered your own friend, maybe your only friend, just to make another few credits.”

  “Three untruths in one sentence! That’s impressive error density, even for someone as consistently dense as yourself, captain. Shelma and I weren’t friends. We were colleagues. We had a certain amount of respect for one another’s capabilities, I suppose. I didn’t murder her, either. Her death was probably caused by a fault in her exo-suit – you probably damaged the mechanism during your messy rescue attempt. Either way, it’s a pity. As for the third error… it’s not about money, captain. It’s about changing the galaxy. About being the man who changed the galaxy.”

  “After my ship performs an autopsy, do you think it will confirm accidental death?”

  “I’m only making an informed guess,” Thales said pleasantly. “But I imagine I’m correct in the broad outlines.” He didn’t seem worried, which meant he knew the autopsy would show no wrongdoing, or else he was so convinced of his importance that he thought it wouldn’t matter if they could prove he’d murdered the Hylar.

  The problem was, if Thales was the only person in the galaxy who could create wormholes on demand, he really was that important.

  “When this is all over…” Felix began, and then stopped. He couldn’t think of any threat he’d be allowed to follow through on, and he hated to make empty ones.

  “When this is all over,” Thales finished, “I’ll be rich, and you’ll be promoted, and we’ll never have to see each other again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should look over the rest of Shelma’s files. I doubt they’ll be any use, but you never know. Meanwhile, you should call your masters and tell them you crippled the Barony of Letnev’s wormhole technology program and pillaged its resources for yourself. You people love pillaging. I’m sure you’ll get a pat on the head.” Thales waved a dismissive hand, and Felix left, because another wave of rage was building within him, and this time he might not stop at pushing the man against a wall.

  We should have shoved Thales out an airlock when we had the chance, he thought.

  Chapter 14

  “Where are we going?” Severyne demanded.

  “I love it when you get that tone.” Azad lounged in her quarters – pretty cushy by Letnev standards, as they’d belonged to the commandeered ship’s first officer, but they could pass for a solitary confinement prison cell anywhere else – and looked up at Severyne, who stood in the doorway, doing her best to be imposing and severe. Azad could be respectful when the chain of command made it necessary, but Severyne wasn’t part of that chain of command, was she? And being insolent with her was much more fun. “Come sit beside me. Craning my head back to look up at you is giving me a cramp. I don’t want to end up all stiff-necked like you.” Azad sat up and scooted over on the bunk, patting the thin mattress.

  Severyne entered, turned, and sat down. She kept her eyes front as Azad slouched against the bulkhead and looked at the Letnev woman sidelong. “We have limited time, Azad.” Severyne clipped off her words. “I’ve followed your course settings so far, but I demand to know our ultimate destination.”

  “What will you give me for it?”

  “You have your life, the promise of freedom, and my agreement to give you the Hylar scientist when we capture her. What more could you possibly want?”

  “A little kiss?”

  A muscle in Severyne’s jaw twitched.

  Azad grinned. “I’m just kidding. I’ll take lives, and I’ll take the spoils of war, and I’ll coerce confessions, and I’ll blackmail assets to turn them to my cause… but I only enjoy kisses when they’re given freely.”

  “How nice to learn there are limits to your depravity.”

  “I thought you’d find it comforting. All right, I’ll tell you where we’re going, and as a bonus, I’ll even throw in why. When we captured Thales and scooped up his files, I had my squad’s analyst do a quick look through his data. She had cognitive implants that enhanced her pattern-recognition, that kind of nerd stuff, so she was able to collate a large amount of information quickly. She found something interesting in the reports he sent to his old investor.”

  “You mean the human businessperson who funded their original lab?”

  “That’s the one.” The funding for Thales and Shelma’s lab had actually come from the Federation of Sol’s black ops military budget. The affable “investor” they’d taken meetings with was just a useful idiot the covert branch employed when they needed a plausible front, and Azad had read all the reports before she even started this mission. “Going over those reports, I noticed a weird omission – Thales never once talked about a power source. It seems like ripping holes in space-time
would take a lot of juice, doesn’t it? But he never even sketched a drawing of a fusion reactor. That got me curious.” It had actually gotten the analysts curious, and they’d asked Azad to help them satisfy that curiosity. “I flipped through the rest of his files, looking for anything pertaining to power, and there it was – a notebook with page after page, full of exclamation points and circles and underlines. Turns out, yeah, their design needs a lot of power – more than you could get from a reactor of conventional size, even the ones that power warships. You’d drain a war sun just warming up their activation engine. Using conventional energy sources, you’d have to turn a whole planet into a power plant, and something like that’s not exactly practical or portable.”

  “I assume Thales found a solution?”

  “Sort of, but it’s one of those solutions that generates a whole new set of problems. Thales had a power source in mind, something experimental and well-guarded, and he was pulling his hair out because there was no way he could get his hands on it, and couldn’t think of a plausible alternative. Apparently, your friend Shelma told him about it – an experimental energy source, very portable, that taps into so-called ‘dark energy.’ You know what that is?”

  “It’s the theoretical energy source that causes the universe to expand,” Severyne said.

  “I knew you were smart. Dark energy is limitless, or damn near, but it’s also theoretical – nobody’s figured out how to plug a starship into the engine that moves the stars. Back when she was running the shipyards, though, Shelma had connections in the blue-sky R&D division–”

  “The what?” Severyne interrupted.

  “Blue sky – oh, right. Where you’re from, you never see the sky. I don’t know what the equivalent idiom is in the Barony. It means no limits, wide open.”

  “Ah. We say ‘endless dark.’”

  “Who says it’s not a beautiful language? So, anyway, Shelma knew people in the endless-dark research and development division, and they told her they were working on a device that taps into the dark energy field that’s present all around us. Thales was excited about that, and his notebook was full of attempts to figure out how such a thing would work – he figured if he couldn’t get his hands on the power source, maybe he could reproduce it. He didn’t have much luck, though. Too far outside his area of expertise, I guess. When he gave up on cracking the problem himself, he started trying to figure out how to steal the one the Hylar were working on. He scrawled the names of various powerful people and factions – even the Nomad, can you believe that? – who might have the resources to break into the Universities of Jol-Nar. One of those names was the leader of the Mentak Coalition, so Thales ended up with partners he was thinking of joining up with anyway. Funny, huh?”