Bringer of Light (Hidden Empire)

by Jaine Fenn

  The day after, they went for a sightseeing pedicab ride in the morning. Taro had spent his youth not being allowed in anywhere; now he had ID that allowed him in everywhere, he insisted they visited the State Quarter, even though there wasn’t much to see. Jarek enjoyed the museums, and Taro did a bit of shopping in the kind of boutiques that wouldn’t let ordinary downsiders within sniffing distance but were only too happy to serve Angels.

  It was late afternoon by the time they got back to the hotel, and Jarek announced he needed some downtime, by himself. Nual, with a smile, agreed to handle any calls that might come in; it didn’t take her abilities or Taro’s experience to know what his plans for the evening were. Taro was curious, and hung around the hotel lobby until he spotted the cove – he was between Jarek and Taro, age-wise, handsome rather than pretty, and well fed and well-dressed. If he hadn’t been in the profession himself once, Taro might not have clocked him as a joyboy at all. Taro smiled to himself.

  When Nual returned from checking the local newsnets he was about to suggest they get an early night too – but then he thought about it, and discovered, somewhat to his shock, that sex wasn’t what he wanted right now.

  Nual said gently, ‘You should go. If you don’t, you’ll always wish you had.’

  ‘To the Undertow, you mean?’ he said aloud.

  She nodded. ‘Did you want me to come with you?’

  ‘I . . . No. I just need to see, for myself.’

  ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’

  He kicked off as soon as he left the hotel, flying low and slow, enjoying the awed upturned faces and pointing fingers that marked his progress.

  The pale disc of the sun was almost level with the rim of the City, and when Taro dropped below the edge, the upside-down shantytown of the Undertow was bathed in orange light. Even the romance of sunset didn’t stop him seeing it for the desperate, squalid place it was. A chaotic expanse of tangled nets hung below the maze of hanging vanes, many of which had been cut and pinned over generations to form the narrow ledges of mazeways and boxy, shambolic homespaces. Here and there he could see the damage done by the ‘cityquake’ – a torn net, an empty loop of rope, a section where a whole mazeway had come free and fallen to the ground, far below.

  Well, he was here now. This was unfamiliar territory, and none of the colours fluttering from the dangling ropes of the watertraps meant anything to him. He chose a route close to the edge and began to fly. When he looked upwards he glimpsed the occasional figure, but they were too busy not taking the fall to pay him much attention. Unless you had to cross a net or check for ’trap colours to help you navigate, you kept to the mazeways.

  He wondered how the water-trader Fenya was doing – and her lazy, crazy Remembrancer husband; or Arel, who’d been trying to make a new life for herself after Limnel fucked her over: that was a point, who was even in charge of Limnel’s troupe now? Of course, there was almost no chance of finding any of them, and even if he did, they knew him as a lineage-less runner, not as an Angel who travelled the stars. It would be too weird, seeing them now. He could probably find the Exquisite Corpse, if he put his mind to it; the Undertow’s one and only bar was run for the Angels, after all, and it advertised itself with banners meant to be seen from below. But his only friend there was Solo, the place’s alien barkeep, and whilst he thought of the gawky winged empath with affection, he/she/it was likely to be too busy to chat at this time of the evening.

  He reached the far side of the disc and headed straight back up, without looking back.

  The Minister finally called Jarek the next evening, as they were finishing dinner at the hotel – they’d done more tourist stuff in the day, including a visit to the Zoo, but their credit was dwindling, and another restaurant felt like an unnecessary indulgence when the City was picking up the tab at the Cracked Emerald.

  ‘Everything is in place,’ said the Minister. ‘You are booked on the midnight-twenty shuttle flight. We will rendezvous in the transit hall in two hours.’

  Taro packed his few possessions with mixed feelings. When he’d arrived, he’d suspected he’d never call Khesh City home again. Now he knew it. And that felt weird.

  They reached the transit hall early, and found a relatively quiet corner while they waited for the elevator queues for the earlier shuttle to subside. The Minister emerged from the crowd a few minutes later. He had a kid of about twelve in tow.

  Taro tried not to stare. Children were rare in Khesh City – Vellern wasn’t a family destination, and a lot of the citizens who lived and worked here left their youngsters on safer Tri-Confed worlds or habitats.

  The boy looked local. He was handsome, in a bland, slightly dazed sort of way. His gaze, openly curious, flicked between the three of them as he approached.

  ‘And who’s this, then?’ asked Jarek.

  ‘Well, according to his ID, he is the child of a minor Kheshi noble house who you are transporting to a nearby hub-point to complete his out-of-system education.’

  ‘And who is he really?’

  ‘Vy, though that is less a name than a designation. He will get you to Aleph.’

  ‘He’ll what?’ said Jarek. ‘I’m not sure I—’

  ‘He’s an avatar, ain’t he?’ Taro interrupted. ‘Like you?’

  ‘Not exactly like him, no.’ Despite the boy’s high, childish voice he sounded serious and grown-up. ‘The body you see was created to replace an avatar destroyed in the cityquake; it was still undergoing development. This consciousness is not the one that was originally intended to inhabit it.’

  ‘Not meaning to be rude,’ said Jarek, looking a bit queasy, ‘but before I let you on my s— before I travel with you, I want to know exactly what you are.’

  ‘Precisely what I said: an avatar of Khesh, modified to operate with greater autonomy. And I have within me the beacon address of Aleph, which I will programme into your ship’s navigational comp. Then, when we reach Aleph, I will remove it again.’

  ‘My brothers in the Magellanic Cloud are somewhat paranoid,’ the Minister said. ‘They would never allow a ship with the coordinates of their beacon in its comp to remain at large in human-space, for fear the females might get their hands on it.’

  Nual said tightly, ‘And how do they feel about a female Sidhe visiting them?’

  ‘They have no choice. Although Vy will provide the coordinates, your abilities will be required to persuade the transit-kernel to undertake the journey.’ The Minister beamed at her. ‘You are hardly the first female to rebel against your race, you know.’

  ‘So you need a female Sidhe to get to or from Aleph?’ asked Jarek.

  ‘You do now, yes.’ The Minister’s smile didn’t falter. ‘Right then: before you get your shuttle, there are a few things I should tell you.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As soon as the Heart of Glass was safely en route for the Tri-Confed beacon, Jarek gave Vy access to the bridge. The boy – like the Minister, it was better to give him a human designation, Jarek decided – didn’t so much programme the comp as commune with it. Jarek had already witnessed something similar on Serenein, but it was disconcerting to see a mind like that at work on his ship – and it was still his ship, whatever the legal documents said. He asked Taro to make him a strong caf so he could keep an eye on Vy while the boy worked. After a couple of hours at the console Vy wandered off, muttering that he was done now. Jarek locked down the ship’s controls to stop further tampering, then went to get some rest. He’d got his body-clock in step with Vellern just in time to leave.

  He awoke to someone shaking him and for a moment he panicked, until he focused enough to make out Vy. He slapped at the hands on his shoulders and the boy backed off, looking offended.

  ‘What’s the goddamn problem?’ he rasped at the boy.

  ‘I’m bored,’ Vy said, accusingly. ‘I want something interesting to do.’

  ‘And I’m trying to sleep,’ said Jarek. ‘Go bother the others.’

  ‘Taro shouted at me
when I went into their cabin.’

  I’ll bet he did. Jarek was tempted to do the same, but he didn’t much like the idea of a bored, immature male Sidhe avatar looking for diversion on his ship. At least the boy had let him sleep for – he glanced at his com – an hour and a quarter. Great. ‘Fuck’s sake!’ he groaned. ‘All right, I’ll sort you a game to play.’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ said Vy.

  ‘We humans have a word we use at times like this,’ said Jarek, trying to keep his temper. ‘It’s “please”. We also have doors for a reason, which is to allow us some privacy. Have you ever come across either of these concepts?’

  ‘Plea-se,’ Vy said, like he was trying the word out.

  Jarek sighed and got up.

  Vy turned out to be predictably talented at gaming, and voracious in his appetite for new challenges. Good job Jarek had a comprehensive games library, he thought. He had never wanted children – which was fortunate, all things considered – but if he had, then a couple of days trapped on a ship with Khesh’s youngest avatar would have been enough to make him seriously reconsider.

  Vy ate twice as much as anyone else, and slept half as long. He listened to other people’s conversations with a disconcerting intensity before interrupting to ask a question or (as he saw it) correct an error. He also enjoyed juvenile pranks, a particularly dangerous trait in someone so technically accomplished. If Taro hadn’t asked about the gurgling sound in the head they might not have discovered Vy’s attempts to reverse the settings on the excreta recovery unit until it was too late. In the confined space of the ship the results wouldn’t have been at all funny – not to adults, at any rate.

  Jarek found himself wondering, more than once, what effect tranq might have on the boy’s apparently human body.

  He wasn’t sure why he had had to bring Vy with them at all, not once he’d provided Aleph’s coordinates. The ship was heading to a system full of male Sidhe: surely one of them could just reprogram the navcomp to get them home? It also occurred to him that even with Aleph’s coordinates removed from the Heart of Glass’s comp, the ship itself was still a liability: once they’d been there, the pattern of Aleph’s beacon would be imprinted on the ship’s transit-kernel; if the females captured his ship then they could probably force it to shift to Aleph without any intervention from a male. Presumably the Aleph males considered that to be an acceptable risk, whilst having the coordinates actually stored in the comp was not. Or perhaps the Minister was a good enough judge of character to know that Jarek would see the Heart of Glass destroyed before he’d let it fall into the hands of his enemies. Then again, maybe the Minister didn’t expect them to come back at all – Jarek was pretty certain he hadn’t been telling them everything. But whatever the risks, he was committed to this course of action now.

  He did try asking Vy why he had to remain on board, but the boy just shrugged, a gesture he’d picked up from Taro and now used almost constantly, much to everyone’s irritation.

  This time they departed the Tri-Confed system by the book. Jarek took a slow, conservative course out to the beacon, then requested an onward transit to Pior-Terrane, a dual system with good trade links and a transit-path on to Hiliap, the hub where they were contracted to take their passenger.

  Nual and Taro got Vy into stasis while Jarek prepped for the shift. Perhaps because they were used to one of Khesh’s avatars, the Angels found Vy much easier to deal with than Jarek did. While Nual and Taro viewed the Minister almost like some sort of eccentric uncle, the Minister’s casual disregard for human life turned Jarek’s stomach, and Vy was part of that same being. But the Minister was an ally – or at least, the enemy of his enemies. Jarek still woke up sweating and terrified from nightmares of his time as a captive of the Sidhe females. And now, in order to fight them, he’d sold his ship to a Sidhe male. He’d have been screwed either way – if he hadn’t taken the Minister on as a silent partner, the Veryan Syndicate would have taken every nut and rivet and left him with nothing. At least he had it in writing that the Minister couldn’t intervene in his affairs directly.

  A gentle ping from the console told him that shutdown was nearly complete and he looked around, a little worried. He’d have expected them to have got Vy settled by now. He had already received authorisation to depart when Nual finally floated up to the bridge.

  ‘That took a while,’ said Jarek. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Vy was scared. He didn’t want to go into stasis.’ They were down to basic life-support now and her face was hard to read in the dim light.

  ‘But he’s the one who insisted we put him in the comabox for the transit!’

  ‘I know.’ Nual sounded frustrated; had Vy been human she could have coerced him into obedience.

  ‘Well, we’re locked down and we’ve got our window, so let’s get this over with.’ As Nual turned to go he added, ‘Good luck.’ She nodded an acknowledgement.

  When she’d gone Jarek tried to settle into his couch. He always got butterflies immediately before a transit; one initiated by someone else taking control of his ship to propel him into another galaxy made him feel like he had a whole flock of birds circling in his guts.

  Then the birds landed all at once and his stomach leapt up his throat. His eyes were filled with the darkness of the void, his ears with the roaring of the universe and he was falling, falling—

  Gone. Everything. Gone.

  Nothing. Something? Someone. Me. Yes!

  Pounding, grinding, nauseating. Me. There’s . . . me. And I . . . feel like shit. Like . . . the taste of puke. He could sense that, acid and twisted. It was vile, but it was real. He was real. Whoever he was.

  It’s only shiftspace. I’m in the shift. Not dying.

  Not dying: just in the shift.

  Keep saying the words, remember you’re real. This will pass. Not dying: just in the shift.

  What if I am dying?

  What if I’m already dead and this is Hell?

  No. No no nonono. Won’t accept that. Won’t . . . I am someone. Someone, somewhere. There is hope. There is light. Will be light. There is . . .

  . . . fading in and out. No. Hold on. Not dying: just in the shift.

  Remember you exist. Have existed. Will exist. Whoever, whatever, wherever, there’s life. You’re alive. Still alive. And . . .

  Not dying: just in the shift.

  Not dying: just . . .

  Not dying . . .

  Not.

  He woke to the stench of dried vomit, but the memory of the nightmare transit was already fading. He’d never had one that bad – then again, what had he expected? This wasn’t a normal transit scheduled via the beevee system and though realspace and shiftspace didn’t map directly – two systems within half-a-dozen light-years might be a dozen transits apart – actually transiting to a different galaxy had to be a whole different ballgame.

  He prised himself off the floor before opening his eyes, then spent a few moments confirming that the world was still there, and real. Then he brushed himself clean as best he could and laboriously scaled his couch.

  Getting the ship’s systems back online was always a priority after a shift, but it had never been as important as it was now. Fortunately his body knew what to do, even if his mind was still half in shiftspace.

  They’d come out of the shift at quite a lick; the plan, such as it was, was to cancel the velocity and come to a (relative) halt, then wait to be contacted on the channel the Minister had provided them with. But as soon as the ship’s systems started to come online again, alarms began going off all over the place. One was the warning every captain making an unscheduled transit dreaded: proximity alert.

  He stared dumbly at the board, even as his hands tried to coax the in-system drive into life. Sensors were still on minimal, but he gleaned enough from the readouts to know that whatever had tripped them wasn’t on a collision course, thank Christos. He had a few minutes’ grace, so he spared a glance at the other alarm flashing away on his screen. Electrom
agnetic energy pulse? From where? Why?

  The ‘where’ he spotted almost at once: something was trying to slow-fry his ship from below – ‘below’ being a relative term. The nav-shields were always the first to come up, and the EM was relatively low-level, so whatever was firing on them wasn’t endangering the ship yet. Before it built up enough energy to be an issue, the drive would be back up and they could take evasive action.

  He needed to see outside. Given the EM pulse was aimed at the base of the Heart of Glass, he decided to risk opening the shutters on the bridge dome while he waited for the more sophisticated systems to wake up. Sometimes the human eyeball was the best sensor.

  He briefly wondered how Taro and Nual were doing before deciding that they’d have to wait until he knew the ship was safe.

  The shutters retracted to reveal a sky filled with a curtain of shimmering light, coruscating in shades of red and gold and orange. What the fuck?

  As his eyes adjusted he saw that the light didn’t quite fill the sky; there was darkness at its bottom edge – the darkness of space. So some kind of massive, translucent sheet had been hung in front of the stars. Then he spotted a dark spot, just below the centre, which was visibly shrinking as he sped away, arse-first. A tear in the veil. Uh-oh. So that would be the rip his ship had made when it tore through the whatever-it-was. He looked away from the beguiling sight to check his heading.

  At least the Heart of Glass hadn’t taken any damage; the curtain must be very low-density. But he’d still damaged it, and that explained why the locals were shooting at him. Except—

  —except the EM pulse wasn’t coming from the curtain, it was coming from underneath him.

  Suddenly he realised what he was seeing: Holy Christos, it’s a lightship!

  And that wasn’t a curtain, it was a sail – and what he’d originally taken for a weapon was actually the light-pulse being transmitted from a fixed point to fill the sail and propel the ship. Had it not been for Jarek’s obsessive interest in space history when he was a boy, he’d have had no idea what he was looking at; no one had used lightsails for thousands of years. But Aleph had existed independent of human-space for millennia . . .