The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

by Becky Chambers

  He took a deep breath, pulling himself together. He looked to Dr. Chef. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

  “Yes, yes,” Dr. Chef said, heading for the door. “I’m off to knock out me and the clerk.” Rosemary had decided to take Dr. Chef up on his offer to sedate her this time. Ashby had thought that best, both for her sake, and for the sake of the control room floor.

  He returned to his chair and buckled his safety harness. “Patch me through, Lovey.” The vox switched on. “Okay. Let’s sound off.”

  “Flight controls, go,” said Sissix.

  “Fuel check, go,” said Corbin.

  “Interspatial bore is go,” said Kizzy through the vox. “I remembered snacks this time.”

  “Buoys are go,” Jenks said.

  Ashby flexed his fingers over the control panel. He was itching to get started. “Lovey, what’s up with the Toremi?”

  “They didn’t reply. But they’re staying behind the safety perimeter. Only just, though, they’ve got their nose right up against the buoys.”

  “That’s okay, as long as they’re not coming any closer. What’s our status?”

  “All ship systems performing normally,” said Lovey. “No technical or structural malfunctions.”

  “All right, folks. Let’s get out of here. Kizzy, start it up.”

  The floor panels rattled as the bore began to howl. Ashby tapped a finger on the arm of his chair, beginning his count. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

  “Ashby.” It was Lovey, calling out over the din. “The Toremi ship. I don’t know what it’s doing. There’s a — ” The bore shrieked, drowning her words.

  Ashby’s pulse shot up. “Have they crossed the perimeter?” he yelled.

  “No. Some kind of energy build up. It’s nothing I’ve — ”

  What happened next must have gone quickly, but in Ashby’s eyes, everything was slow, as if he were already in the sublayer. First, the window went white, flooded with harsh light that obscured everything beyond their hull. As the light dimmed, arcs of energy writhed around the cage supports, ricocheting around the inside.

  The cage was coming apart. Not falling, like a structure down planetside, but breaking, twisting, floating away. Ashby stared, uncomprehending.

  Something hit them. The whole ship rocked and shuddered. Red lights appeared all over his control screen, like eyes snapping awake. The lighting panels overhead spasmed. There was likely some sort of noise, the sound of straining bulkheads or warping panels, the sound of his crew calling out in panic, but whatever sound there might have been was drowned out by the bore, which had come to the end of its count. The sky outside ripped open. The Wayfarer tumbled through.

  Day 157, GC Standard 307

  SEVEN HOURS

  Sissix fought with the controls, trying to think through the fear and the din of voices.

  “No buoys,” Ashby yelled. “Jenks, did you hear me? Kizzy?”

  “Ahead fourteen ibens,” Ohan said.

  “I can’t,” Sissix said. “We’re all over the place.”

  “But we must,” Ohan said. “The space behind us will — ”

  “Yes, I know,” she snapped. Without a cage, the newly punched hole would be closing rapidly. And without normal space bracing them from behind, they’d be tossed around like a bird in a gale if they sat in one place for too long. She could already feel the ship trembling.

  “Lovey? Dammit, anyone!” Ashby said. “Shit, the voxes are down.”

  “Jenks won’t drop buoys now,” Corbin said. “He’s got too much sense for that. He knows what would — ”

  “Sissix, fourteen ibens, now,” shouted Ohan.

  Sissix hissed profanities as she tried to stabilize the ship. Her readouts were flickering, and the propulsion strips kept veering out of control. Her vision swam, as it always did in the sublayer, and without readouts or any visible stars, she had nothing to orient herself by. She clenched her jaw and punched controls. “I’m disabling the safeties. We’ll be off-kilter, but it should give us enough push to — ”

  “Sissix — ” Corbin began.

  Her feathers stood on end. “If you think I care about the fucking conservation levels right now — ”

  “You think I care?” he said. “Use what you need.”

  She glanced back and met his gaze. “Can we keep it this high the whole trip?”

  “Yes.” He looked to his readouts. “Yes, we have enough.” His eyes were frightened, but sure. “Do whatever you need. I’ll watch it close.”

  She gave him a quick nod and cast a glance over her flashing readouts. “Dammit, Kizzy, I need — ” She grimaced, remembering the voxes. The Wayfarer lurched as the sublayer began to fall in around them. “Fourteen ibens?”

  “Yes,” Ohan said.

  “Stars help us,” she said. She threw the ship forward.

  ●

  Kizzy tore off the primary access panel leading to the nav grid. All through the engine room, lights flashed, tubes groaned, walls shook. Everything sounded wrong.

  “I’ve got to get to the core,” Jenks yelled across the room. “We’ve got to get the voxes back.”

  “There’s no time,” Kizzy said, staring at the mess in front of her. “If the main routing cable is fried, that’ll take hours. I need you here.” Her eyes flashed over the damaged circuits. She ran back toward the tool cage, her steps feeling thick and slow. The sight of her engine room falling apart would’ve been bad enough in normal space. In the sublayer, with time weaving in and out, it was a nightmare.

  “We can’t assess the damage without Lovey.”

  “I have eyes,” she said, grabbing fistfuls of tools. There was a loud, wet pop from a nearby wall, the sound of a fuel line breaking. “Oh, stars! Get that!” She ran back to the access panel, trying to determine where to start. It was going to be a hackjob fix, but she had no choice. She’d put it back together later. If they got out of this.

  She watched the circuit lights scurry around the grid, their patterns wild and unfamiliar. Shit. “Sissix has the safeties off.”

  “Great,” Jenks said, ripping open the other wall. Fuel sprayed fast from the burst line. Lashes of thick green goo arced out, spattering the walls and pooling on the floor.

  Kizzy watched the circuits, her mind racing. Without the strips working at full capacity, Sissix needed the extra oomph, no question. But on Kizzy’s end, having the safeties off made her task of repairing the grid while in use all the harder. With Lovey stuck in the core, and without knowing what Sissix was planning to do next, she’d have to guess at what to patch. And a bad guess could send them spinning out of control. “I need to know what she’s doing up there.”

  “I’ve got it,” Jenks said, dropping his tools. He pulled out his scrib and darted away from the steadily flowing fuel. “Give me five minutes. I can network everybody’s sib transmitters together. We’ll all have to hang onto our scribs, but — ”

  “Genius,” she said. “Do it, then come help me.”

  “What about the — ”

  “Leave it,” she said, and almost laughed. How screwed were they, that a broken fuel line was the least of her worries? “If we can’t fly, it won’t matter.”

  Rosemary came stumbling around the corner, bracing herself against the groaning walls, her steps halting and uneven. Kizzy remembered walking that way once, during the first days of her sublayer training. “Give me something to do,” Rosemary said.

  “Why aren’t you out?” Jenks said.

  “There wasn’t time to get dosed,” she said. “Dr. Chef went to be with Ohan, and I know I’m no tech, but — ”

  Kizzy took Rosemary by the wrist, ran over to the fuel line, and pushed her crewmate’s hands against the gushing tear. “Press down hard. And whatever you do, do not let go.”

  ●

  Hours crawled by, but Sissix did not feel them. All she could feel were the controls beneath her hands, and the constant shudder in the floor plating, and the sublayer making her world blur. With the bore still
active, the ship was creating a sort of temporary tunnel, just big enough to keep moving forward. But without buoys, the gap around them only lasted a few minutes, giving them little time to calculate their next move. Her readouts held steadier now, but the grid was still fighting to do its job. So was their Navigator.

  “I need a heading,” Sissix said, feeling the shudder grow stronger.

  “Yes,” Ohan said, panting. “Yes.” Dr. Chef crouched alongside them, holding them by the shoulders. Ohan’s hand trembled as it darted across his scrib, calculating faster than Sissix had ever seen. “Six-point-nine-five ibens, straight up.”

  “We’re over halfway now,” Ashby said. “You can do this, Ohan.”

  “Yes. Of course we can. Of course we can.” Ohan drew in a ragged breath. “Seven…no, no, eight…aei!”

  Sissix whipped her head around as Ohan’s stylus clattered to the floor. The Sianat Pair had slumped back against Dr. Chef, raising their trembling arms.

  “No,” Ohan cried. “No, no, no, not now, not now.” Their fingers hung limp, like puppets with the strings cut. They stared at their useless hands in horror.

  Ashby leapt to his feet and ran over, fitting a vial into the syringe that Dr. Chef had given him earlier.

  “Give it here,” Dr. Chef said. Quickly, gently, he pushed Ohan’s head toward the floor, exposing the shaved patch on the back of their neck. He looked at Ashby. “This was going to be taxing enough under normal circumstances. Heightened adrenaline is not the best thing for them right now.” He slipped the needle into the bruised skin.

  Ohan gasped, their arms jerking ghoulishly. Sissix felt ill, but she did not look away. The shudder in the floor swelled again. Her pulse raced to match it.

  Ashby retrieved the stylus from the floor. “Ohan?”

  Ohan drew in a terrible breath, like wind through dry leaves. They reached out to take the stylus.

  Sissix closed her eyes in relief, then looked at the Pair again. “Hey,” she said. Ohan looked up at her. “We can do this, you and me. Together. We’re a good team.” Her throat grew tight. “We’ve always been a good team.”

  Ohan blinked once, and took up their calculations with furious resolve. “We will not let you down.”

  ●

  Kizzy knelt on the floor, her hands deep in the guts of the aft propulsion drive. Waves of heat pushed back against her face. “Sissix,” she shouted toward her scrib. “I’ve got a processing unit that’s about to fry. I need to shut down the secondary aft strip.”

  “How long?”

  She shut her eyes and shook her head, trying to think. “I don’t know. An hour, maybe.”

  “Stars, Kizzy — ”

  “I know, I know. But if I don’t fix this thing now, you won’t have it for the exit.”

  “But I will have it then?”

  I don’t know. “In theory. Definitely not if I do nothing.”

  “Can you get it up any faster than that?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “So will I.”

  Sweat ran down her face, making rivulets through the gunk and grime on her skin. She leaned back from the heat of the damaged strip and unzipped the top half of her jumpsuit, tying it around her waist. Her undershirt clung to her back. She flipped open the manual service panel on the outside of the drive casing and punched in commands. Stars, I need Lovey right now. The voxes were still down, and since Lovey didn’t seem to be working with any systems on her own, she had to have lost access to her monitoring network. Kizzy knew she must be going nuts, stuck in the core when she knew the ship was in trouble. Maybe it was better that way. At least she didn’t know how bad it was.

  The strip powered down. Kizzy leaned back, wiping her brow. This was not what she’d signed up for.

  “Kizzy.” It was Rosemary, her clothes still caked with fuel, now dry. Her face was grim, and Kizzy knew it wasn’t just because of the obvious. Rosemary had never been trained for sublayer work, and even running errands back and forth had to be hell on her. “Here.” She reached into her satchel and pulled out a bottle of water and a ration bar.

  Kizzy unscrewed the bottle top and brought it to her mouth. Her lips and tongue sucked up the moisture greedily. She took several gulps, and gasped. “Oh, stars, you’re a hero.” She finished the rest, ripped open the ration bar pack with her teeth, and knelt back down. “Get some to Jenks, too,” she said, taking a bite of bland, dense protein.

  “Am doing,” Rosemary said. “Where is he now?”

  “Algae bay. Corbin’s down there, too. The pumps are getting — ” The ship rocked hard as Sissix willed them toward a new heading. Kizzy braced herself against the floor, grabbing hold of the edge of the drive. Rosemary wasn’t so fast. She hit the opposite wall and tumbled off her feet.

  Kizzy waited for the rocking to stop. She could hear the voices from the control room over the scrib, Sissix swearing, Ashby firmly saying, “Ohan, stay with me, we haven’t got that much longer — ” As the trembling in the floor died down, she turned her head toward Rosemary. “You okay?”

  Rosemary pulled herself up against a panel, her jaw clenched tightly. A fresh cut on her upper arm started oozing red. She watched the blood run down, but her eyes were somewhere else.

  “Whoa, hey, no,” Kizzy said, scrambling over. She knew that look. That was a I am completely done look, and they so did not have time for it right now. She took Rosemary’s bloody arm. It wasn’t a bad cut, just a long one. She tore a length out of the sleeve of her jumpsuit and wrapped it around the wound. “Look at me. Rosemary, look at me.” She tied off the fabric, trying to find the right words. She tried to think of something wise and clever that would snap Rosemary back. But she wasn’t wise and clever, she was just some hackjob tech who was making it all up as she went along, who might very well be killing them all with some badly patched circuit or some frying pathway she’d overlooked, and what the fuck had they done for those four-legged animals to fire at them anyway —

  She took a breath. She took a breath, and thought of an Aeluon woman with a badass armored vest, surrounded by buddies dripping with guns, telling her that she was scared of fish. “Rosemary, listen. I am right where you are. I’m feeling that, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rosemary said, her voice catching. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m trying — ”

  “No, listen.” She took Rosemary’s face in her hands and looked her in the eye. “Stop trying not to be scared. I’m scared, Sissix is scared, Ashby is scared. And that’s good. Scared means we want to live. Okay? So be scared. But I need you to keep working, too. Can you do that?”

  Rosemary pressed her lips together and shut her eyes. She nodded.

  Kizzy kissed her friend’s forehead. “Okay. So here’s what you need to do. Get to the algae bay, give the boys some water and food. Then come back to me. I’m going to need a tool runner. Got it?”

  Rosemary looked back at her, her eyes more steady. “Got it.” She got to her feet, squeezed Kizzy’s arm, and ran back down the hallway.

  Kizzy dove back into the drive, tools in hand. “All right, you fucker,” she said, peeling back the casing of a cable bundle. “You’re gonna do as I say.”

  ●

  The exit cage was close. Its signal blinked invitingly on Sissix’s console, their port in the storm.

  “We’re coming in too fast,” Ashby said.

  “Nothing I can do about that,” Sissix said. With the grid patched together as it was, she wouldn’t be able to ease them in.

  “Everybody, strap down.” He glanced at his scrib. “You guys get that?”

  “We’re on it,” Jenks replied. “Please get us the hell out of here.”

  “Ohan, exit,” Sissix said.

  “Nine-point-four-five ibens, ahead,” Ohan gasped. “Six-point-five, starboard. Seven-point-nine-six…point-nine…six…”

  Sissix turned around just in time to see Ohan’s eyes roll back in their head.

  “Up or down?” she said. “Up or down?”

 
But there was no answer. Ohan was seizing.

  A dozen distressed sounds burst from Dr. Chef’s mouth. “Black canister, top drawer, third from the left,” he said. “Go.”

  Ashby bolted out of the room, faster than handfeet could run. Sissix looked at her controls. Everything went slow and quiet, but it had nothing to do with the sublayer. She could hear nothing but blood roaring in her ears. Up or down. How many times had she done this, and yet she couldn’t answer such a simple thing on her own. Up or down. The floor began to shake. Up or down. She couldn’t guess, even though the odds were good, even though they’d be torn apart if she did nothing. They could come out in the wrong place, or the wrong time. They could come out inside a planet, or another ship. Fifty-fifty chance, and yet, and yet —

  Ashby came back, and tossed the canister to Dr. Chef. The doctor pulled out a medical device and pressed it against Ohan’s wristpatch. A second went by. Two. Three. The tremors stopped. Ohan went rigid, their mouth falling open.

  “Ohan,” Ashby said. “Ohan, do you remember what you were doing?”

  “Yes,” Ohan whispered, then frantically, crying out, their eyes wild: “Up! Up!”

  “Ashby, strap down!” Sissix yelled, working the controls as fast as she could. “Punching in three…two…one.”

  She slammed her hand on the controls. The ship broke through, too fast, hurtling out of the sublayer and straight for the upper pylons of the cage.

  “Shit!” She sent them starboard, hard, gritting her teeth as she tried to throw the bulky ship aside. Kizzy was yelling something about the portside strip, but she didn’t have time to hear what it was before she felt the strip give out, sending them into a tumble. Sissix worked fast, angling them toward an empty gap. The Wayfarer groaned in protest, but she didn’t listen. She pointed their nose toward the gap, and shut down the remaining strips.

  They passed the pylons, flying clear, coasting into empty space.

  Sissix put her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Behind her, she heard Dr. Chef mutter something comforting before carrying the wheezing Sianat out of the control room. She heard Ashby unbuckle his safety harness and walk over to her. She felt him press his palm against her back. She did not look up.