Bender of Worlds

by Isaac Hooke

  “No I was not,” Jed said.

  “I can barely make out the ugly thing underneath that dark sphere...” Gia said.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance as well,” G’allanthamas commented.

  Gia stared at the alien coldly, then nodded toward the wider ramp. “You’ll have to climb into the cargo bay, Alien. There isn’t much room, I’m afraid. But it’s better than the rest of the ship, which you won’t fit at all. I’m sorry.”

  G’allanthamas approached the open ramp cautiously, and then climbed to the top. He surveyed the cramped cargo bay inside and promptly descended to the bottom of the ramp once more.

  “I’d rather stay out here until we launch, thank you,” G’allanthamas said. “I’ll just plunk myself down in a corner of the hangar and mind my own business.”

  He ambled off toward the far side of the hangar.

  “By the way, there are no cameras inside this hangar,” Gia said. “You can shut down your blurring, if you like. I’m assuming it’s you who’s creating these dark spheres?”

  In answer, the blur spheres around Tane, Sinive and G’allanthamas dissipated, but otherwise the dweller didn’t say anything more. He reached the far side of the hangar and set himself down.

  “I hate those things,” Gia commented.

  “I’ve fought at his side,” Jed said. “The dweller is honorable.”

  “Whatever you say,” Gia told the Volur.

  “Why Mosaic?” Tane asked the woman.

  “Mmm?” Gia said distractedly. She was still directing the arms over the console.

  “The name of your ship,” Tane clarified.

  “Oh.” She gave him an evaluating look, and then gazed longingly into the distance. “With her, I’m not limited to one planet anymore, but rather I can travel to a veritable mosaic of them. To all the stars in the sky. With her, the mosaic of the galaxy is my playground. You get the picture, World Bender. I probably shouldn’t have bought her, but I figured, all the money I was paying cargo haulers to take me back and forth across the galaxy would be better served adding to my own equity in the long run. It’s always better to buy rather than rent, hey? Plus I can live aboard, so that’s an added bonus. Brings the concept of the houseboat to the next level.”

  “Call me Tane,” he told her.

  “Sure, World Bender,” Gia said.

  He decided to ignore the slight, if it could be called that. “How come no crew?” he asked her. “Then again, it says the crew complement is only two anyway. Though it’s currently one. I’m assuming that means you.”

  “That’s right,” Gia said. “I’m a one-woman operation. Small ship. Man the jump chamber myself. Or woman it, really, if you want to get technical.”

  So she could Siphon, too. But like Sinive, she must have been too weak to ever qualify as a Volur. He wondered vaguely if she had ever served in the TSN.

  “I do keep a couple of repair robots, of course,” Gia continued. “And I have the prerequisite 3D printer aboard. And an AI to keep everything running smoothly. Between the two of us, we run the ship.”

  “What’s the AI’s name?” Sinive asked.

  “There you go, always wanting to know the name of the AIs,” G’allanthamas called from halfway across the hangar.

  “Quit listening in!” she shouted back.

  “Keep it down, please,” Jed chided.

  “Sorry,” Sinive said.

  “The AI is called Muse,” Gia said.

  “Oh, of course,” Sinive said. “Mosaic, run by Muse.”

  “That’s right,” Gia said.

  “Your ship is so beautiful,” Sinive commented.

  “Thank you,” Gia said.

  “But you just said it looked like a garbage scow!” Tane told Sinive.

  She shot him a withering look. “You misheard. I actually said it looked like a gorgeous scow.”

  “By the way, have you finished refueling?” Jed asked Gia.

  “Done a long time ago,” Gia replied.

  Gia apparently finished attaching the current emitter, because she lowered her arms, which caused the big robotic limbs to move away from the rear of the ship. She must have completely disengaged from the machine then, because when she dropped her arms to her sides entirely, the robotic limbs remained frozen in place.

  Gia turned toward Jed. “So, Scow-class ships have only one spare guest room, you know that right?”

  “We’ll just have to make do,” Jed said.

  Gia leaned forward and, to Tane’s surprise, rested an open palm on Jed’s chest. “I was hoping you’d want to share my stateroom.”

  The Volur shook his head. His eyes seemed sad. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Gia said. “For old times sake.”

  Jed reached up, gently grabbed her by the wrist, and lowered her hand. “I’ll be rooming with Tane.”

  Tane felt a sudden disappointment. He had been hoping to share with Sinive.

  Gia seemed similarly dismayed, because her eyes became suddenly shiny, and she blinked a few times before looking away. “All right.” She glanced at Sinive. “You can share my stateroom, then. I’ll have a bunk set up over mine.”

  Sinive seemed extremely happy to be bunking with Gia, which only furthered Tane’s disheartenment.

  “It’ll be like a girls night in!” Sinive said enthusiastically.

  “Yeah, or something,” Gia said. “We’ll make it work.”

  “Do you need help with the emitters?” Jed asked Gia.

  “Nope,” Gia replied. “I received your blueprints earlier. I got it covered.”

  “Why don’t I help you?” Sinive said.

  “Perfect,” Gia told her.

  “It’ll be good to finally get a break from all this testosterone,” Sinive said. “I’ve been holed up with these guys for what seems forever.”

  “I hear you,” Gia told her.

  “Really?” Tane said. “It’s been like what, a day?” He was referring to when they lost Lyra.

  Sinive ignored him and instead told Gia: “Did I tell you I was into girls?”

  “Oooh,” Gia said, petting her shoulder.

  Sinive gave Tane a wink.

  Tane shook his head angrily and looked away.

  What’s her game?

  He walked sullenly toward the ship and started up the ramp. Jed joined him.

  “She’s playing with you, Engineer,” Jed said softly.

  “I know,” Tane said. “But I don’t know what to do.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” Jed said.

  He wondered vaguely if Jed knew he had slept with her. Probably not. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise him if the Volur did.

  Tane entered the Mosaic ahead of Jed. Inside, the passageways were definitely more cramped than the Red Grizzly: if he would have been wearing a spacesuit, his helmet and arm assemblies would’ve almost scraped the surrounding ceiling and bulkheads. The ship had a climate controlled environment, thankfully, and he began to cool down immediately.

  His chip had some ship blueprints installed, but there were no scow class variants. That was probably another database upgrade. The chip makers had to make their money after all.

  “Muse, do I have access to your blueprint?” Tane tried.

  The female voice of the ship’s AI answered a moment later. “Good morning, Jerry. I have been authorized to grant you access to the ship’s blueprint, yes.”

  For a moment he wondered who Jerry was, but then he remembered that was the latest name he was using in his spoofed profile.

  “Thank you,” Tane said.

  He received a sharing request and accepted. His overhead map filled out with the blueprints, and he made his way to the guest quarters.

  Jed followed behind him. The muscular man had to crouch visibly to fit the tight corridors. He definitely would have had trouble fitting in his power armor, even at the most compact setting.

  Jed kept close to Tane. So much so that Tane paused at one point to say: “Would you mind slowi
ng down? Feels like you’re breathing down my neck, Volur.”

  Tane hadn’t meant to sound so condescending, nor angry, but obviously Sinive’s actions were still bugging him, and made him lash out at those around him. Jed just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The Volur didn’t say anything, but he did ease off, giving Tane some space.

  When Tane reached his shared quarters, he stripped off the sari, and his shirt and pants, and tossed them all into the clothes suitcase inside his storage pouch. He shoved the pouch under the bottom bunk, then opened the sheet and slid onto the mattress. He left the top bunk for the Volur, who preferred that particular sleeping arrangement. Tane had once asked Jed why he liked the top, when most people preferred the bottom bunk, to which Jed had merely replied: “Higher ground.”

  The Volur had undressed in the passageway outside, so that he entered wearing only his skivvies and shut the hatch behind him. His storage pouch was attached to a small loop in the hem.

  I have to get me underwear with a loop for a storage device like that.

  Jed pulled his muscular form onto the bunk on top of Tane. Seeing that sculpted form, Tane almost wanted to follow the Volur’s path.

  If I had a build like that, imagine how many girls I could get.

  He dismissed the thought. There was only a certain class of girl who admired muscles like that anyway. Mostly the superficial class, which had never interested him.

  At least that was what he told himself.

  As usual, Tane was careful not to enable discovery of the local mixnet, even aboard the starship, because that would connect him to the Galnet. Even once they were in space, he’d have to hold off, because he could still receive packets by drip feed. Something that would be bad, given the control chip in his head.

  He closed his eyes, intending to catch some sleep before take-off in the morning. He tossed and turned for a while, and then opened his eyes. He decided to apply his usual augmentation settings, and transformed the bulkheads, floor and ceiling around him into the familiar moon with the gas giant floating overhead. He even replaced the underside of Jed’s bunk, so that it wouldn’t obscure his view. It was as if the lower bunk was the only object that existed here, slightly out of place amid the surrounding craters.

  Much better.

  Before he could close his eyes again, Jed spoke. The Volur’s voice seemed disembodied, coming as it did from the currently invisible bunk overhead.

  “I can’t believe I lost her,” Jed said.

  “You mean Gia?” Tane asked. “She’s damn hot. I don’t blame you.”

  “No, not Gia,” Jed replied. “Lyra.”

  “Oh,” Tane said, feeling suddenly embarrassed.

  “Lyra and I have been working together for almost twenty years,” Jed said. “Ever since she lost her sister.”

  “I didn’t know she had a sister,” Tane said.

  “Yes,” Jed told him. “It’s not something she talks about.” He paused. “I hope we can get Lyra back.”

  “We’ll get her back,” Tane said. “Once we get this nanotech removed from my head.”

  “About that,” Jed said. “Once I help you reach the artifact, and you remove the nanotech, it might be time to part ways. I don’t want you to put yourself in danger again. Facing the TSN, it’s something I’ll probably have to do alone.”

  “No,” Tane said. “I owe Lyra. I owe Nebb. And I owe you. I’m not going to let you face the TSN alone. Haven’t you learned anything at all from hanging out with me all this time?”

  “That you are headstrong, and stubborn,” Jed said.

  “And I always repay my debts,” Tane said.

  “You do,” Jed agreed.

  “Have you heard anything from Lyra, by the way, since we arrived?” Tane said. “You’re the only one of us who can access the Galnet.”

  “I have, but I haven’t replied,” Jed said. “I don’t want to risk the TSN tracing my position to this moon.”

  “They must know we’re here already,” Tane said. “Lyra would have told them how the lenses and their inter-dimensional distortion tunnels work.”

  “Yes,” Jed said. “But what they don’t know is whether or not we’ve left the moon already. As far as they’re concerned, we fled aboard a transport twelve hours ago.”

  “What did she say, anyway?” Tane asked. “Lyra?”

  “She wants to meet,” Jed answered. “The TSN is having her play on my loyalty to her. They want to trade her and Nebb for you.”

  “Interesting...” Tane stared at the gas giant floating above him. “We can use that.”

  “You want to be bait again?” Jed said.

  “Why not?” Tane said. “It worked before with the dwellers. And it will work with the TSN. Let them think I’m giving myself up. Let them think they still have me under the spell of their control chip. And then, when they least expect it, I’ll turn on them.”

  “We’ll talk about this after you get that so-called Repel Nanotech ability,” Jed said. “We don’t even know if the artifact is still there on Kharikhan V. Or whether the Essencework will even work on modern nanotech. Or if we’ll even get off this moon when we try to leave tomorrow.”

  “There are quite a few unknowns,” Tane admitted.

  “I like how you never let anything get you down,” Jed said after a moment. “You don’t back off in the face of adversity. Instead, you step up. You’re still under the control of the TSN, and yet you’re already making plans to use yourself as bait to infiltrate them.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I roll,” Tane said. “But it’s not entirely true that nothing gets me down.”

  “It’s probably best to forget about Sinive,” Jed said, evidently understanding immediately. “As the World Bender, you must have realized by now that anyone you get close to is in danger. If you pursue her, you’ll only be leading Sinive into a world of hurt.”

  A world of hurt.

  On that note, Tane closed his eyes and tried to forget about her.

  Tane awoke the next morning when he heard footfalls on the metal deck beside him. He saw Jed there, pulling on his battle armor. The Volur floated above the battered moon, and it took Tane a few moments to remember that he was aboard a starship now, and that the moon below and the gas giant above were reality augmentations, created by his chip.

  Tane shut down the digital scenery and the cramped quarters blinked back into view.

  “We’re leaving shortly,” Jed said. “Gia and Sinive finished attaching the emitters a couple of hours ago, and our dweller friend has loaded into the cargo bay. Apparently there was a close call in the middle of the night when a security robot checked in on our hangar while the alien was still lurking in the corner. The dweller managed to create a blurring sphere to hide himself in time.”

  “And we slept right through it,” Tane said.

  “We did,” Jed said. “Anyway, Gia tells me the curfew has lifted, and she’s already requested clearance for take off. She’s waiting on a reply.”

  Jed pulled on the last assembly of his armor, and then he shrunk the memory metals down to their thinnest thickness before opening the hatch and ducking into the cramped interior of the Mosaic.

  Tane rubbed his eyes and then swung his feet onto the cold deck. He reached under his bunk, found his pouch, retrieved his clothes, and dressed.

  “Muse, are you able to pipe me in to the cargo bay?” Tane asked.

  “Done,” the Mosaic’s AI replied.

  “How are you holding up, Gall?” Tane sent.

  “Not bad,” G’allanthamas’ voice came over the intercom. “Actually, terrible. I have bulkheads pressing into me on all sides. I can’t lower my body to relax my legs and tentacles since there are no properly designed carapace seats in here, so I’ve had to crank up the power output of my leg assemblies. Right up to max. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, and I haven’t slept a wink. But other than that, not bad.”

  “We’ll try to make this as quick as possible,” Tane s
aid.

  “I’m sure you will,” the alien told him.

  Tane used the map to guide him toward the cockpit. Thankfully the ship’s AI didn’t play any games with him like shutting breach seals along the way, and he arrived at the cockpit in about thirty seconds.

  There, Gia sat in an L-shaped alcove carved into the far bulkhead. Her back lay on the bottom part of the L, while her thighs partially climbed the vertical portion, her knees bent so that her calves rested over a shelf. The bulkhead beside her was silvery: likely Chrysalium. The whole thing had to be a jump chamber. It was a bit different than the chamber aboard the Red Grizzly, which utilized Chrysalium control sticks to give access to the hull.

  Gia had removed the two sawed-off plasma rifles, holsters and all, from her back—it couldn’t have been comfortable to lie down in the chamber with them on. The rifles and holsters lay on the deck just outside the alcove: she was a woman who didn’t travel far from her weapons, apparently. She could have stowed them in the storage pouch she wore at her waist, but she obviously wanted to keep them within easy reach.

  Sinive sat on the floor beside her. Meanwhile, even with his armor reduced, Jed filled the rest of the compartment, which wasn’t very big to begin with, so that Tane was forced to stand in the passageway outside.

  “I didn’t realize there were ships that combined their cockpits and jump chambers into the same unit,” Tane said.

  “Only the smallest ships do,” Jed said.

  Beyond Jed, Gia cocked her head. “Never call my ship small.”

  “I am relatively small, though,” the ship’s AI, Muse, said. “Considering.”

  “Not now, girl,” Gia said. She paused. “Damn. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the TSN is searching every outgoing ship. Actually, scratch that, of course you know. Hell, you’re probably the reason they’re doing these searches. Anyway, I already had the ship cleared yesterday evening before you came, but they’re telling me they want to do another search pre-launch.”