by J. S. Morin
“We’re dead,” Tanny said matter-of-factly. The Mobius was picking up five patrol class closing on their location. She looked up at Carl and shook her head in disgust. “You’re as good with techies as you are with cards.”
Carl scanned the sensor displays. They had chosen Port-of-St.Paul for its relatively remote location, so there was some slop in the patrol response window. “We’ve got time. Get us to orbit and park just out of atmo.” He hit the comm. “Roddy, get the shields ready to take a pounding.” Keying off the comm, he rushed from the cockpit.
“Where you going?” Tanny asked.
“To make Mort’s day.”
# # #
Esper sat on the couch with her hands folded in her lap. She had fled there after Carl and their new passenger flew past the guest quarters. Something was wrong, she had realized, and Mort had confirmed her suspicion. The wizard sat beside her, leaning forward to rest elbows on his knees.
Footsteps pounded down the corridor toward them, culminating in Carl’s breathless entrance. “Mort, I need you to be ready. Drop us… soon as I say.”
“How deep?” Mort asked.
“Bury us.”
A glint flickered in Mort’s eye as he replied. “As you command, Lord Ramsey.”
Carl gave him a raised eyebrow. “Don’t go archaic on me. Just get us astral enough that planetary security can’t fire on us.” He held up a palm to calm Mort’s manic look, then headed back toward the cockpit.
“You!” Mort said, pointing a finger squarely at Esper. “Fetch my things. The staff is in plain view, the robe hanging in the closet, my chain of office is under the dirty laundry pile.”
“But why can’t—”
“Just do it!” Mort snapped. He leapt to he feet and paced the common room, hands outstretched. Esper edged past him and opened the door to his quarters.
She had poked her head inside Mort’s quarters once or twice, but never set so much as a foot within. She had, in fact, avoided going inside anyone else’s quarters but her own since she’d been aboard the ship. But she had made especially sure to steer clear of the living quarters of Mordecai The Brown. Issues of privacy and personal space aside, there was something unnatural about the air that wafted out the door each time it opened. It was anachronism embodied in a cloister of a bedroom, from the antique wrought iron candleholders to the shelves filled with paper books; it belonged in a museum or a retrovert colony, not aboard a starship.
But there was an urgent need, and Esper had no time to worry that she was stepping into the seventeenth century as she crossed the threshold. There was a musty smell inside, something that the ship’s air filtration seemed unable to remedy, but she was otherwise no worse for her entry into Mort’s domain. From the rugs thrown across the steel floor to the clutter that hung from every wall, it would have been easy to fool herself into believing she was in an old-Earth cottage from a holovid—if not for the massive window that showed the moon Drei rapidly falling away beneath them.
Esper found the staff first, resting against the headboard of Mort’s bed, and she used the butt end of it to shift aside soiled wizard-wear on the floor until a silver chain emerged from the pile of cloth. The metal was pleasantly warm in her hand, reminding her that it was no ordinary substance. Each link was as thick as her little finger, and the pendant that hung from it bore the insignia of the Convocation—a letter ‘C’ struck through with a lightning bolt. Mort’s closet was a jumble of sweatshirts and novelty sweaters from dozens of different worlds, but one leather garment bag stood apart from the rest. Unzipping it, she found a well-tended robe, cleaner and in better repair than anything else in Mort’s closet.
Back in the common room, she helped Mort wriggle into the robe and then handed over the staff and chain. The blue atmosphere outside the overhead dome was tinged in red as the Mobius’ shields ignited the oxygen and forced it out of their path. The fires gave way to the quiet, endless void of the Black Ocean as they achieved orbit. The ship shuddered.
“We’re parking,” Carl’s voice came over the intra-ship comm. “Get us out of real-space before the satellite defenses pulverize us.” As if to emphasize his point, the ship shook once more.
Mort pointed to a seat on the couch. “Silent. Still. Understood?”
Esper nodded, keenly aware of the first of Mort’s commandments.
With a flourish that sent the voluminous sleeves of his robe fluttering, Mort spread his arms, staff held clutched in one hand. Raising Earth-born old wood over his head, he grabbed hold of it with his other hand as well and slammed the butt end to the floor. The ship convulsed, and Esper couldn’t tell whether it was Mort’s doing or the work of Drei’s defense force. Either way, the Black Ocean’s eponymous color soon faded to the now-familiar grey of astral space as Mort chanted. She had heard his spellcasting before, but this time there was an urgency in his voice, something plaintiff and raw that made her curious what sort of argument he and the universe were having. Being magical itself, it was strange that the earring charm she wore couldn’t—or wouldn’t—translate it.
Esper expected Mort to stop at any moment, but he kept up his chant. He gestured with his hands and shook his staff as if some rival debater threatened to win the day. The flat gray outside the domed glassteel ceiling deepened, not darker but rather acquiring an element of depth that it had previously lacked. Esper dug her fingers into the couch cushions to hold on as vertigo swept over her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away or close her eyes. It seemed an affront to the wonder before her not to witness it. An iridescence swirled in as Mort’s chanting grew frantic. Soon the whole sky shifted in swirls and whorls of purple. The purple darkened and reddened as Mort screamed primordial syllables. Esper spared a glance from the astral miracle outside to see Mort’s face dripping sweat. With a final shout and the slamming of his staff once more against the steel floor, the sky settled back into purple and stayed that way.
Mort stood panting, leaning on his staff for support. “That ought to do it.”
“So…” Esper said, not quite sure what to say after such a display. “Where are we?”
Mort managed a weary chuckle. “Damned if I know. We’re not dead. The rest can wait. I need a nap.” Without any further comment he shambled off toward his quarters.
Soon after the door thumped shut, Carl peeked into the room from the cockpit corridor. “What the hell was that?”
Esper felt drained. Her fingers were stiffened into claws from gripping the fabric of the couch, and whatever worries had welled within her had been siphoned out by Mort’s simple pronouncement that they were still alive. “Well, Mort purpled the universe, but I’m guessing you could see that up front. He almost redded it, which I gather would have been bad, but he managed to convince it to be purple for us instead. If you want a better answer, you’re going to have to wait out Mort’s nap. How deep did he put us, anyway?”
Tanny walked in behind Carl. “We’ve got no way to tell. The astral depth sensors work by scanning progressive depths back to real-space to pick up E-M radiation. They can’t find real-space from where we are.”
“So…” Esper said.
“We could be five minutes from any system in the galaxy,” Carl said, “but with no way to navigate.”
“Does this happen often?” Bryce Brisson was out of sight down the corridor, but Esper knew his voice by process of elimination.
“No,” Esper replied with a sigh. “It’s something different every time.”
# # #
Roddy walked into the common room to find the rest of the crew sitting around in an uncomfortable silence, along with their new passenger.
“I know I’m not gonna like the answer,” he said, “But what the hell just happened? The engines went into an overload lock and restart, and that’s about the best news I’ve got.”
“I’d have called down to tell you,” Carl replied, “But the comm’s down.”
Roddy lifted his palms to the ceiling. “You couldn’t have, maybe
, yelled down or something?”
“Didn’t think you’d take this long coming up.”
“I’m the mechanic, and the Mobius is falling apart around me,” Roddy griped. “Either Mort fucked something up, or the planetary defenses got us and this is hell.”
“Pretty sure this isn’t what hell would be like,” Esper replied.
“Although …” Carl said, taking aim with the holovid remote and pressing several buttons with no response. “Adrift with a blown holo-projector would be a good start.”
Roddy frowned. “Gimme that!” He took the remote and ambled over to the holo-projector, pressing buttons all the way. “What the …” he muttered to himself. Prying open an access panel, he peered inside. One of the circuit cards popped out after a brief wiggle. “This shouldn’t be possible. This thing’s right in the middle of where Mort always stands to send us astral; it’s packed with more glyphed obsidian rods than … well anything I’ve ever worked on. That’s for sure.” He shoved the circuit card into Carl’s hands.
He took it gingerly, as if it would be hot, but it was just cool, hard plastic. Holding it up to his eye, he squinted at the surface and noticed the striations across the whole length of the card. “What am I looking at?”
“Those ripples,” Roddy said, “Those aren’t supposed to be there at all. It’s like … I dunno, we went astral faster in some parts of the ship than others. Engines took a bit of roughing up—not as bad as this. But the Mobius just got pressed through a toothsoap tube or something.”
Carl sighed. “Well, I guess no holovid to watch while we wait for Mort to wake up and get us back to a depth we can—”
“You’re not getting it,” Roddy said. “There’s no more holovid until we buy a new one. Circuit traces are disrupted and cross-connected. The data matrix is scrambled eggs. This thing’s nothing but an awkward table now.”
“The main computer is still fine,” Tanny said. “I mean, we can’t compute a heading, but the nav-comp knows we can’t.”
“We’re lucky fucks, then,” Roddy replied.
“Well,” Bryce said. “At least they stopped shooting at us.”
Carl chuckled. “They did, at that. Gotta wonder what those trigger-happy bastards were thinking when we dropped off the far end of the astral sensors.”
“Yeah,” Tanny said dryly, folding her arms. “I feel much better knowing that we crippled our ship to confuse some pisspot lunar militia who wanted you for questioning.”
“Better than taking a chance,” Carl replied. He turned to Bryce. “Since there’s nothing to watch, want to see your quarters?”
# # #
The converted conference room echoed their footsteps as Carl and Bryce entered. Aside from a cot and a rickety bedside table, the room was empty. The full-wall window cast everything in a hazy purple hue from the strange astral space outside.
“Cozy,” Bryce said deadpan.
“Reminds me of a song,” Carl replied.
“Considering the fare you’re charging, I was getting a little embarrassed,” Bryce said. He unslung the pack from his shoulder and pressed it into Carl’s hands. “Now it seems like a fair trade.”
Carl grimaced. After all they had just been through, it didn’t seem right taking everything Bryce had left. “Sorry,” he said. “I just can’t—”
“Like hell you can’t,” Bryce replied. “A deal’s a deal.”
Curiosity piqued, Carl unbuckled the pack and peeked inside. A smattering of A-tech devices nestled among a change of clothes. He was no expert, but the brands were top-of-the-line: ClanCore, Nano Nano, Fylax, and one in laaku that he recognized by logo alone. “Lemme guess …”
“Yup,” Bryce said. He looked Carl up and down. “Clothes’ll probably be a bit loose on you, but they’re worth more than the pile of scrap circuits after your wizard’s little stunt.”
“He means well.”
Bryce turned his back and meandered over to the window. “Not my problem, now. All I’ve got is a ticket to a system of my choosing.”
“About that …”
Bryce whirled, scowling. “You’re not stiffing me.”
Carl held up his hands. There was a good chance that the blaster in Bryce’s holster was at least temporarily out of commission, if not permanently fried. Mort was asleep. Tanny and Mriy were too far to intervene. It was the sort of survival math that ran through Carl’s head any time danger presented itself outside a cockpit environment. “’Course not! You just haven’t mentioned where you’re going.”
Bryce nodded to himself and scratched beneath an ear. “Yeah. Guess I haven’t. You know the Freeride System?”
“Sure,” Carl replied. The official name was Syrbaat, or Syerbat or something tongue-twisting, but hardly anyone called it by that name. Certainly, no one who belonged there would use the scientific nomenclature. “The Poet Fleet’s turf. We’ve been out that way before. Not the nicest neighborhood, but if you wanted to travel in the protection of ARGO’s loving chokehold you wouldn’t have hired us.”
Bryce gave him a puzzled look. “You’re not even going to haggle?”
Carl puzzled right back at him. “What do you mean?”
“I paid you with a sack of dead A-tech and my dirty laundry,” Bryce replied, prompting Carl to hold the pack away from him. “And then I ask you to take me halfway across ARGO space to a system with black-level security.”
“Like you said,” Carl replied. “A deal’s a deal. Besides, black schmack. Security is fine out there if you play by their rules. It’s just not ARGO security. Hell, maybe we can find some work out there to pay for repairs.”
“So … you’re not even worried about this?” Bryce asked, jerking a thumb at the swirling chaos outside the ship.
“Just looking at it makes me want to vomit,” Carl confessed. “But Mort’ll get us out of this. Don’t worry. Just whatever you do, don’t wake him up.”
Bryce grunted. “Grumpy wizard. Tell me something new.”
“Not grumpy,” Carl corrected. “Forgetful. Might take him a minute to remember we brought you on with us. Last thing you want is Mort thinking you’re an intruder.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Bryce said. He flopped down onto the bed with a long-suffering sigh. “Does this bed smell like dog?”
“No,” Carl replied. “Of course not.”
# # #
Kubu sat on Mommy’s bed. It was nice enough—the blankets smelled like her. She had left him a bucket of water and a pair of boots to chew on, but there wasn’t much else to do in the little room. There was nothing to look at outside the window, just a lot of purple sky. The purple sky had stopped being interesting once Kubu realized there were no birds or animals out in it. It was just a boring purple sky.
Kubu was hungry. He was usually hungry enough to eat, but this was the bad kind of hungry that made him wish that Mommy’s boots were just a little easier to chew. The dry slab of meat she had left with him was a faint memory in his tummy, already grumbled up and ready to drop somewhere later—but not in Mommy’s room. Mommy had trouble getting her point across most of the time, but she’d managed to make that one clear.
Mommy had been gone too long. There was a chance that she might never come back. A rational part of Kubu’s brain told him that was silly, and that Mommy would be back; that kept him from being sad about his temporary abandonment. The less rational part told him that he needed to eat something, even if it wasn’t yummy.
Yelling at the door did no good. He’d tried it enough times to know that Mommy couldn’t hear him through it. Mommy’s ears weren’t very good, because he could hear voices on the other side sometimes. He tried to open the door himself, but his paws couldn’t work the handle. It was time to take matters into his own jaws.
Mommy didn’t keep lots and lots of things in her room. There were her dress-up clothes, and the leash and harness he had to wear when they went outside the ship. There was a big box he couldn’t get open, and a few funny-tasting things that were too har
d to gnaw on. Kubu nosed around the room, sniffing everywhere he could find for something to eat. Here and there, he pushed aside one of Mommy’s strange things or dug behind something to see if anything was hidden there.
He found a bunch of small boxes. They were tucked behind a piece of wall that had just enough room for Kubu to fit a claw into. Mommy ate from a little box just like that every morning. The box was metal, but it cracked open when he bit it and little bits of food fell out with a few shakes. They didn’t taste good, but Kubu was hungry, and they were better than nothing—or metal boxes.
It was a lot of work for how little food was in each one, but on the off chance that Mommy might not be back for a long time, Kubu emptied them all. By the time he was finished, if it was possible, he was even hungrier. Mommy’s little foods were broken. They didn’t sate Kubu’s hunger; they didn’t taste good, and his tummy was starting to gurgle. There weren’t a lot of things Kubu had eaten that made his tummy bubble. There was a bucket of bad water in the mean science man’s big house that had made him sick. Some spotted mushrooms had made his head funny and his insides wobbly. And one time Kubu had eaten a bunch of little frogs without chewing them first; those felt so bad in his tummy that he puked them back up and didn’t even bother eating them again.
This was worse than all of those put together. His head was wobbling, his legs had gone jittery, and the room was getting too hot around him. Kubu was angry that Mommy had left him alone. How dare she not give him enough food and make him eat the yucky tiny food in the metal boxes. Kubu’s breath came quick and heavy. He bit the mattress from Mommy’s bed shook it. It was dry in his mouth though, and Kubu was beginning to notice just how thirsty he was becoming.
With effort, Kubu stood on his hind legs and turned the faucet with a paw. Jamming his face into the sink, he lapped up the water as fast as his tongue would flick. Mommy, where are you? Kubu isn’t feeling good.