The Fractured Void

by Tim Pratt

  “She probably could escape. I don’t think she will, though. She doesn’t want to piss off the Disciplinarian.”

  “How did Azad find us? You assured me there were no tracking devices on Shelma or myself.”

  “There was one on Shelma, but we neutralized it. We didn’t detect any on you, and we did a pretty deep scan. The thing is, I don’t think they did find us. They seemed as surprised as we were.”

  “It’s a big galaxy, captain. To suggest that our meeting is coincidence rather strains credulity.”

  “It is a big galaxy, yes, but it’s not that big a sector. In this particular region of space, there’s only one person you go to if you need an untraceable ship, and that’s Sagasa. They’re after us, and clearly needed something from Sagasa to help catch us. I wish I knew what.”

  “I’m sure your brilliant military mind will unravel the puzzle,” Thales said. “Or, more likely, there was a tracking device, and you just missed it.”

  “Your confidence means everything to me, Thales.”

  Chapter 19

  Felix and Tib floated in space in the cloud of wrecked ships, inspecting the exterior of the vessel Sagasa had loaned them. Calred was on the Temerarious, helping Thales pack his notes and equipment, which he understandably refused to leave behind.

  The Endless Dark was a far smaller vessel than the Temerarious, meant for longrange travel and exploration, not battle. This little ship had gone a long way and come back whole, though the same couldn’t be said about its original crew.

  “I think it looks like a bird wearing a tiara,” Felix said.

  “That tiara is all its sensors. You want a lot of sensors in a ship meant for exploring, captain.”

  “I know what it is. I just think it looks stupid.”

  “The Temerarious looks like a fat fish with tusks.” Tib put her hands on either side of her mouth and hooked fingers into fangs.

  Felix snorted. The Temerarious had a big belly of a cargo hold, and its fore cannons were a bit tusk-like. “I always say our ship reminds me of a shark, but that’s just me being poetic. Now that you mention it, I can see the similarity to a walrus. While I’m complaining, what about this name? ‘Endless Dark’ is a little bit ominous for a ship meant to go out into deep space and come back with riches, don’t you think?”

  “You’re just uncultured, captain,” Tib said. “‘Endless Dark’ is a Letnev idiom. It means the same thing my people mean when we say ‘unbroken canopy.’”

  “Oh. Well. That clears it up.”

  “I think you’d say ‘the sky’s the limit?’ If you’re Letnev, endless dark is a good thing, just like for my people, an unbroken canopy means you’re safely under cover of the trees as far as you can see, and free to go where you like without fear.”

  “Oh. Thanks, Tib. That makes me feel better.”

  “That’s the most important part of my job as first officer. Do you want to check the interior, and I’ll finish looking over the exterior?”

  Felix concurred and went into the ship. They had to look the vessel over quickly, just keeping an eye out for major, likely-to-kill-them-all-in-transit-level problems, because they were on a ticking clock. Severyne and Azad would be coming after them in just a couple of hours. He didn’t think the Disciplinarian would tell the duo which way Felix and his crew had gone, or in what kind of vessel, but Azad had somehow tracked his crew here, and they might pursue them to the Universities, too. Just what you want in a heist: extra time pressure.

  The interior of the ship was cramped by the standards of the Temerarious, but they’d manage, and the life support, engine, and other functions all checked out green. There wasn’t much in the way of weaponry on board, but where they were going, weapons wouldn’t help much anyway.

  “It looks good in here.” Felix sat in the cockpit. There was a little plastic figurine of a Xxcha in war armor glued over the control panel, which he recognized as a character from an adventure sim popular a decade before. A stab of melancholy went through Felix as he looked at that little personal object, put there by a crew that had set out for adventure and riches and had come back, diminished, to sell the remnants of their dream to a scrapper. He looked out the bulbous viewport at the dead ships hanging all around him and suppressed a shudder. A lot of broken dreams ended up here. “How do things look on your end, Tib?”

  “I don’t see any great big cracks in the hull,” Tib said. “I’d like to check things over more thoroughly, but I don’t think we’ll die as soon as we turn the engines on or anything.”

  “This ship went all the way to the fringes of the galaxy and made it back,” Felix said. “That gives me comfort.”

  “That’s completely irrational, but I’m glad it makes you feel better, captain.”

  “I just mean, if the ship has worked this long, it’s probably fine, right?”

  “Everything works, right up until the moment it stops working,” Tib said.

  “I’m trying to remain optimistic here. Go get Thales and Cal, would you?”

  “Aye aye.”

  Felix powered up the ship. Once he was confident the systems were humming properly, he stripped off his environment suit and sat down in the cockpit again to lay in a course.

  Sagasa had assured him the ship had been thoroughly cleaned and bathed in sanitizing light, but there was a small, dark smear on the side of the navigation console. It looked distressingly like blood. Another little personal touch left behind by the former crew.

  Optimism, Felix thought.

  •••

  The Endless Dark didn’t really have a bridge, so once they were underway the crew met in the galley, which was just about big enough for the four of them, if they didn’t mind their elbows touching; this ship had originally held a crew of three.

  Calred dished out bowls of nutritious protein glop, and Felix dutifully ate. Mostly what he wanted was sleep and a shower. Those would come next. He slurped the last bit of slurry off his spoon and said, “This is an official mission briefing. Sagasa was kind enough to provide us with fake identities, belonging to real explorers who, in reality, are still out there somewhere exploring.” Or dead. “I’m Heuvelt Angriff, swashbuckling outcast scion of a wealthy family, spendthrifting my inheritance on expeditions to uncharted regions of space. Tib, you’re Dob Ell, my loyal family retainer and all-purpose adjunct and helpmeet.”

  “I’m your what now?” Tib said flatly.

  “I know, I know, but it was tough to find ID that made sense for a crew made up of a couple of humans, an Yssaril, and a Hacan, OK?”

  “Who am I, then?” Calred said.

  “You’re Ferocious Naadin, deep-space guide for hire, Hacan of a thousand talents.”

  “I like it.”

  “I hate mine even more now,” Tib said.

  “Swashbuckling. Loyal. Talented. Ha,” Thales said. “Who am I, then? An applecheeked maiden you rescued from space pirates?”

  “You’re nobody. Sagasa got you a flimsy ID, but it doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny – you’re just a passenger we picked up on Vega Minor, and we’re transporting you to your next destination for money. We don’t know you, or anything much about you. You’ll be staying on the ship, so the Universities won’t take as close a look at your ID anyway.”

  “Calred is staying on the ship too,” Thales pointed out. “And he got a fancy bespoke identity.”

  “Yes, but Calred would have felt left out if I didn’t include him,” Felix said.

  “You don’t care if I feel left out?”

  “We would all prefer to leave you out, Thales,” Tib said.

  “I’d like to leave you out in the desert,” Calred said. “Perhaps tied to wooden stakes.”

  Thales showed his teeth in what could not accurately be called a smile. “The contempt of simpletons is as good as the praise of geniuses.” He stood up. “I’m go
ing to go finish faking your wondrous mysterious artifact, unless you need me to sit and listen to further prattle?”

  “Go on,” Felix said.

  The whole crew relaxed when he left. “Is he really going to walk free and be wealthy when this is all done?” Tib said.

  Felix sighed. “If he delivers wormhole tech to the Coalition, they’ll probably put up a statue to him in the Plaza of Heroes on Moll Primus.”

  “He’s a murderer,” Calred said. “We know it, and we might even be able to prove it.”

  “Several of our most illustrious ancestors in the Coalition were murderers.”

  “That was then, and this is now,” Tib said. “Thales had us kidnap Shelma just so he could kill her and steal her stuff.”

  “The Coalition has a whole raider fleet devoted to killing people and stealing their stuff.”

  “That’s not fair,” Calred said. “The raider fleets only kill people who make trouble or can’t follow instructions. Thales is something else entirely.”

  “I don’t disagree with you,” Felix said. “I’m just saying what the Table of Captains will say to justify shrugging off any allegations we bring them.”

  “He only wins if he succeeds,” Tib said.

  “I know. I’ve thought of sabotaging things too, for the pleasure of seeing Thales fail. But what he can offer is too important to the Coalition.”

  “His success would be good for us, too,” Calred said. “We’ll have more promotions and bonuses than we know what to do with if we bring this thing home.”

  “That’s why I haven’t stabbed him in the neck yet, personally,” Tib said. “My selfinterest is stronger than my him-hate.”

  “That’s the Mentak Coalition way,” Felix said.

  “I’ll be glad when we’re done with the part where we earn our rewards,” Calred said, “and get to the part where we can start enjoying them instead.”

  •••

  Felix sent a message to the Universities, knowing it would probably take a while to navigate the necessary layers of bureaucracy to reach director Woryela. He used all the key phrases that Thales fed him: “previously unknown technology,” “unidentifiable chemical signature,” and, “produces energy without a discernible source,” the last to appeal to the director’s professional as well as personal interests.

  He included some pictures and video of the crystal-studded machinery; the crystals glowed pale blue now, thanks to something Thales had done, but insisted wasn’t poisonous or radioactive. Felix also sent a bunch of graphs and charts of diagnostic data that meant nothing to him but that Thales assured him would make any Hylar scientist drool, or whatever the squid equivalent was. “We have a paying passenger at the moment, so we don’t have time for endless meetings,” Felix’s message concluded, “but if we can have an initial meeting with someone high up – the head of the propulsion lab seems like the obvious choice – who can determine whether what we have is valuable, we can make a deal. If you’re too busy, we have a contact in the Barony who’s willing to see us next week. We’re in your neighborhood, though, and we’re eager to recoup the costs of our expedition as soon as possible.” He hoped that last bit added the right note of desperation to make Woryela think he could snag a bargain.

  Then Felix went to sleep, for the first time in what felt like days, as the Endless Dark cruised through its namesake.

  The ship roused him a couple of hours out from the Jol-Nar system. He’d missed their passage through the wormhole on their route – Calred had handled the transition – which struck him as funny, considering the overall nature of their mission. He yawned and checked the system, where he found a reply from Woryela himself: “We’re very interested in appraising your find. I can spare a little time tomorrow morning if you can make it to Wun-Escha,” with an invitation to digitally accept the appointment.

  Tomorrow morning. Felix checked the local time and groaned. He had to wait another fifteen hours before they could meet. That was probably considered swift by academic standards, but right now it felt like eternity. He accepted the appointment, then met with Calred and Tib. “I don’t like it. Azad and Severyne will have plenty of time to catch up with us. Are you sure there isn’t a tracking device on Thales?”

  Calred sighed. “I did everything short of a cavity search, and I only skipped that because it’s not necessary with my scanning equipment. There’s nothing inside that man he wasn’t born with, except gallstones. Azad and Sagasa clearly knew each other from some past business. She was probably just there to buy a ship to chase us with, or weapons to kill us with.”

  “They had a ship, though – Severyne said she’d trade the Disciplinarian a Letnev warship in exchange for us. Why trade down?”

  “Why did we?” Tib said. “Those thorny Letnev ships are distinctive. Maybe they wanted to be more subtle.”

  Felix pondered, then opened comms. “Thales, is there any way Amina Azad could know we’re heading to the Universities of Jol-Nar?”

  “Of course there’s a way,” Thales said. “She didn’t strike me as much of an intellectual, but she had some time with my files, and she may have looked over them.”

  Felix closed his eyes. “You’re saying your files mentioned the need for this power source?”

  “I did say that, and see no need to say it again. I’m working.” The channel closed.

  The crew sat in silence for a moment, then Tib said, “There are only two of them. Three of us. We’ve got the numbers.”

  “Severyne will have others with her,” Felix said. “She’s a supervisor, so she’s going to be supervising people. Guards from her station, who will be eager to see us again, since we left a few of their colleagues dead back there.”

  “I’m worth two of any of her guards in a fight,” Calred said.

  “Let’s hope she only brought two, then,” Felix said. “We might be OK. They don’t know what ship we’re in. We’re under assumed names. The Hylar system is bustling. We’ll be tough to find.”

  “Unless they go straight to the experimental propulsion lab,” Tib pointed out. “Which is exactly where they will go, if they read the files, which we have to assume they did.”

  “We’ll just have to be extra vigilant,” Felix said.

  “Oh, well. That will make a nice change from our current atmosphere of total relaxation,” Calred drawled.

  “Give me some good news,” Felix said. “Tell me the ship found proof that Thales murdered Shelma.”

  Calred tapped his fingertip on a tablet. “The ship is running screens, and has ruled out one-hundred-and-sixty-two known toxins, poisons, and chemicals so far. There are lots to go.”

  •••

  “You’re free to go.” The Disciplinarian’s Winnaran secretary opened the cell door. His headdress sat askew because of the lumpy bandage fastened to the back of his skull.

  “Your head injury was regrettable,” Severyne said. “You should not have attempted to restrain me.”

  “That was not an apology,” he said.

  “It sure wasn’t.” Azad stood from the bench and stretched. “But she’s from the Barony. It’s about the best you’re going to get.”

  They followed the Winnaran along the station’s corridors. “We have to hurry,” Severyne said. “We need to get my sidearm, gather my guards, board whatever heap the Disciplinarian has seen fit to saddle us with, and burn as fast as we can for the Jol-Nar system. With luck Duval and his devils will still be there, and if not, we can try to pick up their trail–”

  “I was thinking about that, while you were napping,” Azad said. “I know you’re all hot to chase after them, and I get it, but how about if instead, we don’t?”

  “What are you talking about? Our very lives and futures depend on recovering Shelma and Thales!”

  “I don’t know about ‘lives.’ I’d have to go rogue, and never return home, but the
Federation navy invested a lot of effort teaching me how to disappear completely, and I have marketable skills, so I’d survive. I’d prefer not to live that way, though, and at this point, it’s gotten personal – I do want to settle my score with Duval and his sucker-punching sidekick. I’m not saying give up. I’m suggesting we approach the problem in a different way.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Severyne asked.

  “I’m still working out the details. Let me work out some more of them.” She trotted ahead to walk beside the secretary. “Hey! Let me talk to you for a minute. Remember me from last time I was here, when we made that little side arrangement? Maybe we can help each other again…”

  Chapter 20

  The twin planets Jol and Nar hung in the viewscreen, blue spheres against the black, shining in the light of their local star. “I’ve never been here,” Felix said. “But it’s your home. Are you sad you won’t be landing?”

  Thales sat in the co-pilot’s chair. He grunted. “Not really.” He gazed quite fixedly at the planets in the viewscreen, though, Felix noted. The man wasn’t totally incapable of human feeling; he’d just buried whatever good impulses he had beneath meters of resentment and grievance and grudge. “I grew up on Nar. The waters are warm enough to swim in without freezing your testicles off, which is more than can be said about Jol. There’s even an archipelago – off-worlders call it the Reef; you couldn’t pronounce the Hylar name for it. My family spent a lot of time there, since it’s one of the only places hospitable to air-breathers. Some of my only good memories are from those days.”

  Felix tried to imagine Thales having a happy day at the seaside with his family. It was like trying to imagine a moray eel reciting poetry. Still, this side of the man was interesting, and might even yield useful information, so Felix kept listening.

  “I began my studies in Nuun-Dascha – that’s where I met Shelma. The greatest city on Nar, and the whole place is a school, really, surrounded by businesses and workers who support or provide for the scholars.”