Over Freezing Altitudes

by Kate MacLeod

  “Daisy?” Scout called.

  Daisy made a little urp of sound. She had both hands around Shi Jian’s wrist but didn’t have the strength to break her grip.

  The closing door drew closer, and Daisy turned to face Shi Jian, bracing one foot on the wall and the other on the closing door, then leaned back with all her strength. Scout cried out in alarm. Was she trying to help Shi Jian strangle her faster?

  Then the last of the webbing gave way with a rip, and Shi Jian shrieked in triumph.

  Or started to. Her triumphant shriek twisted off at the end to one of confused surprise.

  And Scout finally realized what Daisy had been doing. She hadn’t just been bracing her feet to pull back on Shi Jian’s arm; she had been using her feet to pull the door closed just a little bit faster.

  The opening wasn’t large enough for Shi Jian to get through even when she turned her body sideways.

  Then she tried to let Daisy go, to retract her arm, but Daisy held on tight, pulling back with all her might so that Shi Jian’s shoulder remained in the door’s path.

  Shi Jian realized what was happening and screamed in rage. Scout leaned harder on the button, and the repeating voice explaining about the obstruction it was detecting seemed to her ears to acquire a shrillness, as if the disembodied voice were growing alarmed.

  Then the door was biting into Shi Jian’s flesh again, higher this time. And the door didn’t stop.

  It took an eternity, but the motor was relentless. Finally, the last bit of metallic bone was severed and the door shut with a final thoom, cutting off Shi Jian’s cries.

  Daisy fell to the ground, inadvertently hugging the severed arm.

  Scout sagged against the control panel, more exhausted than she had ever been in her life.

  The world was still lurching around her. She wanted to be sick.

  “Scout!” Daisy said, throwing the arm aside. “The other door!”

  There was an echoing boom, then another. Shi Jian was going to batter her way back inside the ship.

  Scout forced herself back to her knees, found the control to open the outer door, and jabbed at it.

  The blows against the door abruptly stopped. A moment later, there was another more distant thoom.

  Then nothing. Just blessed silence.

  Scout slumped down to sit with her back to the wall, but Daisy was already on her feet, scrambling to run back to the bridge.

  Shi Jian wouldn’t die just because she was exposed to the vacuum of space. Scout knew that for a fact. And if she had gotten hold of the outside of the ship, she would crawl around until she found another way inside.

  Scout forced herself up and ran after Daisy.

  “Is she out there?” Scout asked.

  Daisy was studying first one monitor and then the next. At last, she jabbed a finger at one. “There she is!”

  “Where?” Scout asked, looking over Daisy’s shoulder.

  “See her? She’s tumbling through the void.”

  Scout leaned closer and could just discern a dot of movement. Shi Jian dressed all in black was hard to pick out from all of the black around her, but occasionally her tumbling form would blot out a star behind her.

  “Serves her right,” Scout said. “She hurt my dog.”

  “I’m sorry, Scout,” Daisy said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “I didn’t see another way.”

  Scout reached down and gave Daisy’s hand a squeeze.

  Then they both gasped as the star field on the monitor was suddenly blotted out by something much larger than Shi Jian’s body.

  “What is that?” Scout gasped. “Not a tribunal enforcer ship.”

  “No, definitely not,” Daisy said. “You can still see stars through a tribunal enforcer ship. They let all light pass through. This looks like it’s sucking up all the light around it. What the hell is it?”

  Shi Jian’s body was impossible to make out against that background. Where had she gone?

  Then, as quickly as it appeared, the mysterious thing was gone, and the stars were back. And none of them were being eclipsed by a tumbling body anymore.

  Scout felt another rush of world spinning and tried to sit down until it passed.

  She missed the chair, landing on her tailbone with a jolt. Dogs were all over her, licking her anxiously. She tried to pet them, to give them a little reassurance, but the fragments of her vision blurred together and she couldn’t tell just where they were.

  “Scout?” Daisy called from a great distance.

  Scout couldn’t summon words. She couldn’t even think them.

  She kind of thought she slumped to the floor, but it was hard to tell. The world was just dogs anxious for her attention.

  Suddenly a foul smell filled the world, expanding inside her sinuses; there was no escaping it. Scout sat up and scrambled back, trying to get hands up between her and that smell.

  “It’s okay, Scout!” Daisy said. “It’s not a stim. Just a whiff of ammonia. How are you doing?”

  Scout put her hands down and looked around.

  The world had stopped dancing that psychedelic dance.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I dropped us out of hyperspace,” Daisy said. “Shut down the warp field. But you still weren’t coming out of it, and we’re nearly back to Schneeheim, so I thought, why not try the medical bay.”

  “Oh,” Scout said, then realized the dogs were still near her, looking for her attention. She gathered them both close. “Thanks.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Daisy said.

  “I’m sorry too,” Scout said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “But we have business to take care of first,” Daisy said. “Shi Jian.”

  “We still don’t know who she is or who she works for,” Scout said. “But I’m very sure she’s not dead.”

  “No, she’s not,” Daisy said. “This isn’t over yet. I tracked that mystery ship’s trajectory. It’s possible they might stop somewhere and change course to throw us off, but I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure she’s headed to Galactic Central at full speed.”

  “Isn’t that the logical place for her to go?” Scout asked.

  “There’s more,” Daisy said and helped Scout up to sit in the chair.

  The screen in front of her was some sort of schematic of a building, with lines pointing to different places.

  Connecting those places with pictures of Geeta, Seeta, and Emilie.

  “What is this?” Scout asked.

  “It’s what Shi Jian was working on when we boarded,” Daisy told her. “She’s setting up an op. To get inside the compound belonging to the Tajaki sisters known as the Months. To take out your friends.”

  “I’m sure their security system is state of the art,” Scout said.

  “I’m sure it is,” Daisy agreed. “We both know it won’t matter.”

  “Can we send a warning?”

  “Sure,” Daisy said. “I doubt it will help.”

  “Then what?” Scout asked.

  “We need to get there ourselves. In this ship, nothing else is faster. And we need to leave now. Shi Jian already has an hour head start on us. Even that might be too much.”

  Scout rubbed the back of her hand against her mouth. The ammonia smell was still lingering in her sinuses, and the back of her throat had a bitter burn to it from the bile. In fact her entire body felt battered and bruised, and she was so very tired.

  But she had to save her friends.

  28

  Daisy carried the McGillicuddys and the Torreses one by one into an escape pod, buckling them into the seats that lined the space.

  “You’re sure they’ll be okay?” Scout asked. Daisy gently rolled John Carlo’s head back into the restraint and velcroed it into place.

  “They’ll be fine,” she said. “The doctors in processing at Schneeheim are more than qualified to wake them from whatever drug Shi Jian gave them.” She stepped back from John Carlo’s seat, then looked them all over one last tim
e before stepping out of the escape pod. She saw the worry still on Scout’s face. “This is for the best. Shi Jian left all her little spies behind on this world. It’s better for your friends if they don’t know where we went.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past any of Shi Jian’s recruits to torture someone endlessly for information they never even had,” Scout said.

  Daisy gave a curt nod. “You’re right. This is better for us. The one thing we have going for us in stopping Shi Jian is that she doesn’t know we’re planning to. We have to run swiftly and silently. Your friends will be taken care of. The McGillicuddys will get a marshal guard after this kidnapping attempt, so they’ll be safe, and the Torreses will surely have some similar form of government protection only in Galactic Central in their case.”

  “The court case is starting up,” Scout guessed.

  “Barring any more last-minute delays,” Daisy said. “All of the Tajaki lawyers excel at stalling, but they’re running out of objections. The legal proceedings are going to begin. That’s no longer stoppable. Which is why I’m so sure Shi Jian is going to start taking out witnesses. We have to get there. We have to hurry.”

  Scout sighed but nodded, and Daisy fired the escape pod. They watched it fall away behind them on the little monitor until it was no longer visible.

  Then they went back to the bridge.

  “You’re sure you can do this on your own?” Scout asked.

  “Drug you? I’ve had training,” Daisy said, looking over the medical equipment she had hauled in from the medical bay. The bed had been reconfigured into more of a reclining chair mode, and a blanket lay folded across the foot.

  The number of monitors arrayed around it was surely excessive. How many things could actually be going on at one time in her body that anyone would really need to know about in such detail?

  “I meant fly the ship,” Scout said. “We destroyed some things in the fight, you know.”

  “Nothing crucial for our trip through hyperspace,” Daisy said. “I’ll be fine. Are you ready?”

  Scout looked at the reclining chair and hugged herself tight. She was, as always in space, feeling a bit cold. But that wasn’t the chief reason she was wrapping her arms around herself so closely.

  They would be in hyperspace for days. And the little research Daisy had done into what was happening to Scout hadn’t turned up much, only that it was rare and little studied.

  Not so rare that no one else had experienced it. Scout took a little comfort in that.

  But definitely so rare that no one with her sensitivities had gone tearing across the galaxy in a ship with this new kind of super-fast warp engine.

  “I’ll be watching you constantly, Scout,” Daisy said. “If you look at all uncomfortable, I’ll take us out of hyperspace. We’ll come up with another plan.”

  “There is no other plan,” Scout said. “We agreed. We don’t know who else we can trust. We sent a warning to the Months, but without a response from them, we don’t know what they’re doing. Bo is still in hyperspace, and we don’t know who he can trust. It’s just us. We have to get there. And this is the fastest way.”

  “I wish there were another way,” Daisy said.

  “Yeah, well,” Scout said. But still didn’t step any closer to that chair. “I’m really sorry about your sister.”

  Daisy’s eyes widened, as if she was shocked that Scout would bring it up, but then she looked down at her own hands holding the injector she was waiting to administer to Scout.

  “I didn’t know how to tell you I already knew,” Daisy said. “I wanted to, but I just didn’t have the words.”

  “I should have told you first,” Scout said. “I should have found another way to protect myself from your sister than killing her.”

  “What you killed wasn’t my sister,” Daisy said, still looking at her hands. “And what Shi Jian first molded and shaped into a killer . . . I don’t think even that was my sister anymore. She lost herself, that first night in the orphanage. And nothing I did after that night ever helped her find herself again.”

  “She might have. One day,” Scout said.

  “Maybe,” Daisy said. “I don’t know. It’s not worth dwelling on, I don’t think. It’s in the past, unchangeable. We have to focus on what’s ahead of us, what we can change.”

  “The other kids that Shi Jian has indoctrinated,” Scout said. “Maybe we can still save them.”

  “Maybe,” Daisy said. “But first, we save your friends.”

  “Then win our day in court,” Scout said.

  “And then save our planet,” Daisy finished. “Wow. We have quite the to-do list.”

  “Time to check off the first line item,” Scout said and climbed onto the reclining chair. Shadow immediately hopped up out of nowhere to sit beside her, tucking himself close to her side. Gert, who only needed to be near her, not smothering her, flopped down near Scout’s feet.

  “You’ll be awake,” Daisy said. “Aware, but like from a distance. You won’t be able to talk, but I’ll be able to tell if you’re in distress. We’re just trying to calm the hyperactive part of your brain that is trying to track your motion when we’re in hyperspace and hyperspace doesn’t like to be tracked.”

  Scout tried to muster a smile. None of Daisy’s explanations for why Scout felt weird made much sense to her, but Daisy understood it. That was all that mattered.

  “Hit me,” Scout said, baring her bicep for the injector. “And wake me on the other side.”

  Heavily sedated and strapped to a bed: not how she had imagined her arrival to Galactic Central.

  But at last, she was heading there.

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  About the Author

  Photograph © 2016 Jonathan Conklin

  Kate MacLeod lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and two sons. Her short fiction has appeared in Analog, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Persistent Visions, Mythic Delirium and Abyss and Apex among others.

  * * *

  Find out more about the author at www.katemacleod.net. To stay up to date on all her new releases sign up for her newsletter.

  Also by Kate MacLeod

  Novels

  Mitwa

  The Mars of Malcontents

  The Whole World for Each

  * * *

  The Travels of Scout Shannon:

  Under Falling Skies

  In Quaking Hills

  Among Treacherous Stars

  Against Impassable Barriers

  At Galactic Central (coming September 2018)

  * * *

  Novellas

  The Intergenerational Tree

  I Rise into a Daybreak

  * * *

  10-Story Collections

  Tales of Blood and Ink

  Tales of Old Gods and New

  * * *

  5-Story Collections

  Tales of Heian-Kyo and Others

  Tales from the Edges and Ends

  Tales from Forgotten Days

  Tales from Ancient and Future Times

  Copyright © 2018 by Kate MacLeod

  Published by Ratatoskr Press.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover image by Benjamin P. Roque.

  Ratatoskr Press logo by Aidan Vincent.

  Copyediting by Sarah Kolb-Williams.

  ISBN 978-1-946552-68-6

  Created with Vellum

  od, Over Freezing Altitudes