Splintered Suns

by Michael Cobley

  Pyke gave a sardonic laugh and patted his chest pocket. “Got your map right here—and personally I just want to get through this in one piece, then I might be ready to enjoy it!”

  “Do as you must, Captain, and safe journey.” Hokajil smoothed the whiskers on his cheeks and straightened his layers of coats and cloaks. “Now I must be about my business—I’m expecting an important guest and he’s late!”

  Turning, he fluttered his fingers in the air in farewell and strolled off back to his hut. Pyke watched him go in puzzlement, then shrugged and went to rejoin his waiting crew. They were engaged in a tense discussion, in which Dervla was holding onto Ancil’s arm and Ancil was wagging a Finger of Doom in her direction while pulling away.

  “What the hairy hell is this all about? Can I not turn my back for a measly second without a squabble breaking out?”

  “It’s my fault, Chief,” said Ancil. “Well, a bit of it—I just need to follow the guy and investigate …”

  “What guy?”

  Dervla butted in. “While were you off having a gab with Hokajil, we saw this guy—”

  “In really smart silver and crimson body armour,” said Ancil.

  “This guy,” repeated Dervla, “stepped out of one of the rooms up ahead and looked straight at us—he was Ancil’s spitting double! Then he just grinned and took off down the corridor.”

  “Chief, we need to check it out,” said Ancil. “Could be a threat, but he could be a possible ally, or maybe wouldn’t mind answering a few questions—”

  “Wait, just clam it for a second,” Pyke said. “You were with me and the rest of us when we heard Hokajil’s warnings, weren’t you? I’m sure I saw you nearby …”

  Ancil nodded. “I was, Chief, but—”

  “Uh-huh. Look, we’ve been through some pretty crazy stuff, some really weird-ass, skagged-out, brain-mangling shit—and we’re still together. Maybe this guy could be just the guide we need, or maybe he’s a walking, talking scuzzbag sent by some toxic thugazoid to frack us over good and proper. My advice? Hope for the former, but assume the latter. So, with that in mind, what’s our next move?”

  Everyone glanced wordlessly at each other, until Kref put up his hand. “Get the guns from that security office, Captain!”

  “Full marks, Kref, me ould son! Stocking up on the tools of the trade it is!”

  “I was gonna say that, Chief,” said Ancil. “After saying that we need to get a map of these decks.”

  Pyke laughed and punched Ancil’s shoulder. “Got one from Hokajil before we left—we’ll check it when we get to that junction up ahead. Right, let’s go.”

  So saying, he took the lead in a mindful advance along the corridor. There were still those faint cocktail sounds, and the soothing tinkly music, but now it seemed like a mask concealing all manner of dangers and pitfalls. It’s all so clean and neat, he thought. Maybe if we were creeping along some filthy back alley I’d feel more like I was in my element …

  They drew level with a door which turned out to be an archway through to a well-lit, busy lounge. Well-dressed, semi-dressed and hardly dressed passengers laughed and drank and danced on a long, S-shaped platform which drifted around the tall room above head height while others gathered on divans and piles of cushions.

  “That’s where Ancil’s double went,” Dervla said.

  “Interesting,” Pyke said, pointing at the archway itself. “There’s a slightly opaque shimmer across it, see?”

  “I can,” she said. “Is this one of those facets Hokajil was going on about?”

  “I’m guessing yes,” Pyke said. “Maybe Ancil’s double was returning from where he came.”

  “Or,” Moleg said, “he came from another facet entirely and was just passing through our main continuity on the way into that one.”

  Brow furrowed, Pyke looked at Moleg, then back at the archway. “That sounds disturbingly plausible, with extra disturbing. Thanks for that, Moleg.”

  “No problem, Chief.”

  “Let’s move on, shall we?”

  They passed a couple more doors and another archway (into what looked like a library of books resembling slender opaque tablets) but there were no signs of more time-facets. The corridor ended at a T-junction where, to either side, there were airgrav shafts leading up and down. Also, on the wall was an interesting map of the forward section, rendered in partial 3D, with easily selectable decks with passengers denoted by little figure icons in light grey, with a meagre scattering of dark grey ones here and there. The great majority of passengers were gathered on the deck three levels down, a long continuous deck which also spanned the forward section from port to starboard. When Ancil pointed out a couple of rooms occupied by two dark grey emblems, Pyke was pleased.

  “Let’s pick up our pace,” he said. “I’ll feel better about our chances once we get geared up.”

  “You’re not the only one,” murmured Dervla. “Kref still has that heavy shooter, though.”

  “Heh, the popgun, eh? If it’s not some recoilless beast capable of firing belts of AP and HE in full auto, he’s just not interested … okay, everyone, we’re gonna take this airgrav shaft and stick together, all right?”

  Annoyingly, the airgrav shafts only connected one deck to the next above or below, so that you had to get out and switch to an adjacent shaft to continue your journey. They did this twice before the final stage—this was a longer descent in a section of shaft which was transparent, giving them a fabulous view of the spanning deck, which appeared far, far busier than the map had suggested. To Pyke’s eyes, it looked like a single, sprawling, sumptuous and spectacular carouse. Waiters and floating waiter drones circulated with bottles, bulbs, pipes and other intoxicants. Musical players, both machine and organic, supplied tunes for dancing, singing and interjoining. Large suspended screens showed two-vees, adverts or new bulletins or some fusion of all three. Other smaller signboards seemed to be flashing amber lights while lines of Arraveyne text scrolled across them. All this Pyke took in as they descended from the deck above. Emerging from the shaft was like stepping into an explosion of sound, the concentrated roar of a thousand parties.

  “We need to circle round, Chief!” yelled Ancil. “That security station is well to the rear of where we are!”

  Pyke nodded and pointed. “That way!” he bellowed to the rest, and plunged into the press of partying people. But progress was slow—they were continually drawing the attention of half- or mostly drunk passengers determined to offer them all manner of pungent drinks or fuming hookahs, or notionally clad pleasure seekers of both and other sexes offering sensual diversions.

  Pyke’s senses reeled under the assault of such full-tilt carousing. But maybe it was more than that—at this point in time, the Mighty Defender had escaped the collapse of the Arraveyne Imperium just days before so the need for a celebratory shindig was to be expected. Although, from Hokajil’s account, they were also in the early stages of the attempt to evade the Damaugra.

  Whatever—this whole festival is like the grandaddy of all benders, with extra malarkey thrown in!

  With some shouting and manic gesticulating, he drew the others’ attention to a door in a projecting wall. Just as everyone seemed to be moving in that direction, a slender hooded figure barged into him from the side and Pyke felt a small crumpled object being pushed into his hand. Fingers closed around it reflexively and he shouted, “Hey, you, wait!” The figure spared him only a momentary backward glance before disappearing into the heaving crowd. Pyke stared after him, struck by a conviction that the man’s face was familiar … then he looked down at the crushed slip of paper in his hand. He flattened it out enough to read—“Beware the ravens, Captain, and trust no one—Ustril.”

  Pyke gaped in surprise, thrust the message into a coat pocket—then looked up and realised he had become separated from the others. This was a part of the deck dominated by hovering audiospheres pumping out pounding dance music, and the subsonics were making Pyke’s teeth ache. He scanned the su
rrounding crowd, which seemed to have turned into a Convention of the Tall People. Only by standing on a padded stool could he survey a wider span of bobbing heads among which he spotted Kref’s unmistakable profile. He tried shouting across at him but his voice couldn’t compete with the barrage of music. So he orientated himself towards the big Henkayan and plunged back into the crowd.

  After an eternity of pushing and sidestepping and elbow-wedging and apologies for trampled feet and spilled drinks, Kref’s broad back came within view. Right at that moment, the big Henkayan bellowed, “There he is!” and surged ahead like a juggernaut, away from Pyke.

  “Kref!” Pyke bawled as he lunged after him. “Hold up, ya steaming great …”

  Pyke’s leg hit something hard at knee height and he went down. He sensed invasive hands tugging at his coat so he grabbed what felt like an arm and yanked on it while winding up his other fist for a solid punch …

  “Chief!—wait, it’s me!”

  Ancil’s face appeared, clearly attached to the arm that Pyke was hauling on with a will.

  “Ah right, sorry ’bout that,” Pyke said. “Let’s get up out of this, eh?”

  Using each other for support they regained their feet, and Pyke saw Dervla and Moleg struggling to stay nearby—a chanting, double-column dance-chain was winding past and bystanders were being dragged in to dance along, seemingly at random.

  “Where’s Kref gone?” Pyke shouted over the chanting racket.

  “He keeps thinking he’s seen Van Graes!” Dervla yelled back.

  Pyke shook his head and was about to respond, then decided that he wasn’t going to fight against the maddening din. He pointed at his ear, then waved his hand over at a thinned-out area at the aft end of the deck. Dervla and Moleg gave thumbs-ups and everyone began to move determinedly in that direction. Along the way they got Kref’s attention by shouting his name in unison, then pointing him in the same direction. By the time they finally rendezvoused in the not-so-crammed section, Pyke felt like a pummelled, sweat-sodden punchbag. Wiping the grime from his face and trying to cool down, he beckoned them to gather round.

  “I don’t know how we got separated,” he said, “but at least we’re here and in one piece. So, what’s all this about Van Graes?”

  “I saw him, Captain,” said Kref. “Definitely him, up on one of them floating balconies with big-hair lady-friends.”

  Lady-friends with big-hair? Pyke thought. Doesn’t sound like the Van Graes I know, but then maybe I don’t know everything …

  “Floating balconies?” he said.

  “Not seen them yet?” said Dervla. “There’s one.”

  He followed her pointing finger and, sure enough, back along this side of the deck, drifting down through the air, was a curved balcony with about a dozen passengers leaning drunkenly over the rail, waving to others down on the main concourse.

  “That’s not all, Chief,” said Ancil. “We saw Hokajil, a younger Hokajil, hurrying through the crowd! I saw him, so did Moleg …”

  Moleg nodded in that relaxed, diffident way of his so Pyke had to take it seriously.

  “And I saw him after the others did,” said Kref. “I was following him, but then I lost him. Did you see anyone, Captain?”

  “Not really, I …”

  He stopped as a flash of full recall leaped into his mind’s eye. The shoving, jostling crowd, the hooded stranger, the crumpled note pressed into his hand, his shout and how the stranger had glanced back for a moment before the boisterous crowd closed around him. The man’s hood had widened for a second, revealing … himself. The hair had been grey and the lower face bore a five-day stubble not unlike what he was sporting just now, but there had also been a nasty scar running from forehead to cheek down one side.

  “Bran, what’s up? Did you see something?”

  He dipped into his pocket, took out the note and passed it to Dervla. She took it in with a single glance, then gave him a baffled look.

  “Read it out,” he said.

  She cleared her throat. “‘Beware the ravens, Captain, and trust no one—Ustril.’”

  “She passed you that note, Chief?” said Ancil. He whirled to stare out at the crowd. “You mean, she’s here?”

  “Wasn’t her,” said Pyke. “It was another me.”

  All eyes were on him as he described the brief encounter.

  “An alternative you from one of the time-facets,” said Dervla.

  “Yes, and Hokajil told me that none of them were to be trusted,” he said.

  “But it’s signed ‘Ustril,’” said Ancil. “How could she get involved with the Captain’s doppelganger, and why?”

  “How do we even know that the note was from our Ustril,” said Dervla. “From our timeline.”

  “Steer clear of the facets and their wildlife,” Pyke said as Dervla handed him back the note. “Hokajil was very specific about that. I say we just ignore this for now and stick to the plan—find the security office, take their guns, then head for the next time-zone.” There were nods all round at this. “At this point, seems like a good idea to look at this map Hokajil gave me …”

  “He gave you a map?” said Ancil.

  “Well, I glanced at it and thought, not much of a map, but let’s see …”

  From an inner pocket Pyke dug out the piece of folded card the inventor gave him before they entered the wreck. It showed a basic side view of the ship’s forward section with a series of dotted areas indicating the extent of the time-zones created by Hokajil during his flight from the bridge. Then the image on the card surprised him by flipping over to top-down and zooming in on one particular part of one of the decks, this deck, and centred on a small cluster of grey dots. Pyke laughed and shook his head—amid the detailed schemata was a hand-drawn arrow pointing to a room with two dark blue dots in it. The details grew more distinct, and he could see that they were very close, just through the nearby door, down a corridor and the security station was at the junction.

  He showed the map to the rest. “There’s the target, and here’s how it’s going to go …”

  First, Dervla and Moleg went down the corridor and sauntered leftwards at the junction, letting the guards get a good look as they did a passable imitation of a drunk, giggling couple. Some way along from the security station, Dervla faked a fit, Moleg raised the alarm, got one of the guards to come out and along the passage to help the convulsing Dervla into a nearby storeroom (hence the choice of that stretch of corridor), where they ambushed him and rendered him unconscious with Kref’s help.

  Meanwhile, once Guard One was out of the way, Pyke came rushing in to report a fight up on the big food-serving area. As he was describing how two partygoers had started throwing punches, Ancil came hurrying in with a blood-curdling account of how what had started as fisticuffs was turning into a full-blown brawl as others got drawn in. That was enough for the two remaining guards who unsnapped their crowd control sticks and flipped their innocuous looking skullcaps into visored helms. Ancil volunteered to show them where it was all happening while Pyke insisted that he was retiring to his cabin to recover from all the sheer unbridled aggression he’d witnessed.

  Once Ancil and the guards had gone along the corridor and out of the door at the end, Pyke and the others nonchalantly converged on the security station. With Kref and Dervla waiting in the outer office, Pyke and Moleg entered the inner sanctum, ignored the monitor screens and went straight to the secure locker, a large cabinet fronted with black armour leaves. Pyke input Hokajil’s code and the armoured shuttered form-shifted into the side slots, revealing an enviable selection of weaponry. Even as Pyke stood there, admiring the sleek designs and considerate layout, Ancil arrived back from misleading the guards.

  “Right, I sent them on an epic journey through Partyland which should keep them … sweet baby Shiva! What have we here?”

  “Don’t be too grabby,” Pyke said. “Bearing in mind that we’ve got quite a few busy decks to get through while we’re tracking down Raven and her v
ermin. So keep it to a couple of concealable sidearms, and a handful of throwables—got me?”

  Ancil’s expression was a combination of rabid desire and anguished indecision. “If only we had a target range …”

  “Well, we don’t,” said Pyke. “Nor have we got time so take yer pick and let’s go!”

  Ancil took one handweapon out of the rack, examined another, then went on to a third. Meanwhile, Pyke picked up a solidly weighty piece with a twin barrel and a smaller silvery shock gun as a backup. Dervla and Moleg were keen to join in the pillaging, too.

  “Poor Ans,” said Dervla “Like a baby in a candy store.”

  Pyke grinned. “Yeah, all that candy and only one gob to chew with!”

  Ancil’s only response was to raise an eyebrow as he continued his patient scrutiny. Once Moleg and Dervla were kitted out, Kref reached past Ancil towards a weapon similar to the one Pyke had chosen, but Ancil steered him towards another with an odd triangular barrel. “Crowd control, Kref,” he said pointing at the chunky magazines. “Onboard-compliant smackdown rounds!”

  “Ah, controlling crowds,” said Kref as he grabbed it. “Could be useful.”

  In the end Ancil chose a compact flechette pistol as his main sidearm but for his backup opted for an odd gun with a boxy receiver and a short barrel studded with tiny black spikes. The magazines looked like round-edged lozenges. Satisfied, Pyke hustled everyone to exit the security station, making sure the gun locker was closed up before they left.

  In the storeroom back along the corridor, where the first guard was still sleeping peacefully, the crew gathered around while he consulted Hokajil’s map. From the main side-view it was clear that they’d have to travel back up for five decks in order to reach the boundary to the next time-zone. And on the deck above the one they entered, they would have to head along a good-sized corridor to reach the next airgrav-shaft leading up.

  “That’s crazy,” said Ancil.

  “It’s also bloody stupid from a ship-logistics view,” said Dervla. “Surely they wouldn’t hobble the ability of the crew to respond to emergencies—there must be crew-only travel routes around the ship. Have to be.”