Darkspace Calamity

by Christopher Bodan

  His second-in-command appeared around a corner, saw his chief, and shook his head. “Pickin’s ‘er slim, Capt’n.”

  “‘Course they are, Mr. Skreev,” Vance snarled. “Harker brings us this fat starliner with a princess supposedly aboard, and here we are in coach. With the scraps.” The crude pistons in his cybernetic arm hissed and clanked as he lashed out with his pitted metal claw to rip a hole in the bulkhead. “I’m beginning to rethink this partnership with Kate.”

  “Seems to be working out well for her,” Skreev said darkly.

  “Aye,” Vance replied.

  He might have said more, but a glance over Skreev’s shoulder showed him Squall just a few feet away, stepping around a cowering group of battered passengers with obvious distaste. She held her jeweled staff behind her as she watched his crew work, blue-white esper drifting away from her rich auburn hair. She sneered.

  He growled and shouted, “Minnow, get your worthless tail over here, and tell me if there’s anything of actual value on this tub. Minnow!”

  The cypher did not appear. As he looked around, Vance’s cybernetic eye rested on Squall, and the ex-Doctrine witch’s look of barely concealed contempt made his lip twitch.

  “Why do I bother?” he muttered. “Minnow!”

  “Yes, my captain. I’m here.” All their eyes turned toward the voice. The mermaid cypher hovered around the injured passengers; green creation esper flowed from her hands to close up their injuries.

  Vance scowled. “Front and center, little fish. Quite wasting my time. I need your sight.”

  The cypher floated over, dejected but trying to look brave.

  Vance neither noticed nor cared. “Search this scow, stem to stern. Tell me what, if anything, has true value here.”

  From her silence, for a second, he thought she might try to refuse him again. But then she sighed, defeated, and her eyes clouded over.

  Squall pushed in closer, studying the cypher with an almost unseemly intensity.

  Minnow slowly swept her gaze along the ship, and Vance watched her expression closely. He had learned quickly that her perception could unerringly sort the true gems from the costume jewelry. She had sometimes drawn him to random things that seemed worthless but later proved invaluable, and though he knew that she tried to drive his actions and plans, he could ignore her advice and simply use her talents. Those talents now, he trusted, would keep Kate from taking the choicest loot and show her that she could not trifle with Golden Vance.

  Minnow gasped suddenly, and her eyes blazed a violent orange. She floated higher, and creation esper streamed from her like sunlight. Several of the pirates stepped back, fear spreading across their faces, but Minnow quickly shook her head.

  “What is it?” Vance demanded. “What did you see?”

  “It—it is nothing, my captain.” She tried to turn away, but whatever she saw so transfixed her that she could not help but stare.

  Vance narrowed his eyes, and his voice took on a dangerous calm. “Don’t lie to me, little fish.”

  “I—I thought it—I was wrong,” Minnow continued. Her eyes blazed and her breath quickened. “It was not what I thought . . .” Her voice trailed off as her rapturous expression betrayed her.

  Vance closed the distance to her in two strides and clutched her by the arm. Esper shot into him, and he staggered as if hit with a hammer. He gasped as his vision went green and white. He felt minor servos burning out and failsafes tripping in his machine arm and eye. He gritted his teeth and struggled to contain the raw energy rushing out of his cypher.

  “Minnow,” he shouted, “control yourself.”

  He felt her shudder, and the flow of esper slowed. His vision returned, slowly, though an esper-tinted haze veiled everything. He blinked and focused his power to see through the cypher’s eyes. The image that had so captivated Minnow appeared instantly. The form, a woman, blazed with light—a pyre of pure esper, blinding and brilliant white.

  “What is that?” he murmured under his breath.

  He tried to see details within the blaze. Distantly he heard Skreev calling to him, though he could not make out the words.

  “Aft. It—she—is aft. The cargo hold.” Slowly, as he willed his vision to improve, he filtered out the burning aura. The image took shape in his mind, and an incredulous smile crept to his face. “You’ve got to be bloody kidding me. It’s a maid. A robot maid.”

  “No, my Knight,” Minnow’s voice resounded with a strength and surety Vance had never known she possessed. “It is the Source.”

  At the word, the connection between them ended, and Vance staggered back. His skin flushed, and heat shimmered off of his abused cybernetics. Minnow continued to glow, and esper shed from her like rain. As Vance tried to clear his head, the image of the chee still burned behind his eyes.

  Squall pushed forward to the cypher. “What did you say?” she demanded. “What did you see?”

  “It is the Source,” Minnow repeated. “The Calamity has come.”

  Vance blinked his eyes clear in time to see Squall turn ghostly pale and flee.

  ***

  Malya swooped around and angled Sedaris down the luxurious hallway at breakneck speed. The pirates howled and fired snap shots from their pistols as they dove to evade the relic’s long blade. Only a few survived. In an instant Sedaris flew a hundred meters down the hall toward a small atrium, a confluence of corridors. Malya turned so tightly in that tiny space that she should have snapped her neck, but the esper flowing from Mr. Tomn kept her conscious, upright, and hurtling back. The rabbit-like cypher howled gleefully as they tore through the hapless attackers, and this time none of them escaped.

  The relic shot out into the food court’s open air and arced lazily amid scattered small arms fire as the princess surveyed the situation. Boarding parties advancing through the main passages had entered on both the port and starboard sides of the food court. They did not coordinate with each other well, and the ship’s crew seemed to have bottled many of them up in the curving corridors. The sheer number of pirates cutting new holes in the Tranquil Wind’s hull, however, threatened to overwhelm the defenses. A muffled boom rolled to her ears from the starboard side, and she recognized the sound of heavier weapons. Some captain had decided to get serious about this. Another boom and part of the bulkhead wall collapsed, opening a large hole outside of the crew’s defenses. Drifting smoke and pirates spilled through the new opening.

  With barely a breath, she dove at the floating form of a broadside cannon. The scent of ozone meant that the weapon had fired once already, and she hoped she had not come too late. The cannon’s shield generator had just flickered to life, and a brown-and-black striped marmod stood inside the field trying to shout his companion pirates into better cover. If she had not known Calico Kate was behind the raid, the four-armed, giant raccoon-like creature would have tipped her off. She recognized the marmod as the Iron Chef by his chef’s hat and double-handed frying pan. The infamous pirate turned to see her a second too late, and though he massed almost half as much as Sedaris, the relic slammed into him as if he weighted nothing. The Iron Chef careened into the far wall and fell unconscious into the rubble of a buffet. Malya turned her blades on the cannon and its defenders, and they fled or died.

  Two died as they ran, and she whispered a small, thankful prayer that Rin had evidently survived. She steered wide of the stragglers to give her friend a clear shot and sliced her blade through the broadside platform. As the cannon exploded behind her, Malya rocketed down the port side corridor, scything through scattered reinforcements. Mr. Tomn’s ears twitched, and he pulled on her arm, causing her to turn sharply and skid to a halt just past a bend in the hall. At the other end of the corridor, a crowd of pirates, easily the contents of an entire boarding shuttle, rushed forward. Without hesitation, Malya gunned her engine and slapped a lighted panel on the wall. Double-thick emergency bulkhead doors hissed shut inches behind her.

  “That’ll hold ‘em,” she crowed as they sped awa
y, but Mr. Tomn pulled on her arm again. She turned, confused, and saw the ominous shape of another broadside cannon floating out of an earlier breach in the hull. It had hidden as they passed, and now its grinning skull muzzle turned toward them. “It’s a race,” she shouted and kicked in the overbooster.

  With only inches on either side, she hurtled down the passage as the cannon’s charge coils glowed brighter. The gun crew struggled to aim and maneuver but suddenly one dived for cover, and an instant later the others had followed. Malya soared over the weapon, ducking below her control bars to avoid the ceiling, and still scraped Sedaris on three sides. She howled as they ran, but when she glanced back, she saw the crew had turned the cannon after her.

  “There’s no way they can miss,” she whispered.

  Another emergency bulkhead door closed with unstoppable force around the cannon. The weapon’s shield flickered and failed. The meshing metal plates sliced the platform in two as easily as cheese. She stuttered to a halt just shy of the entrance to the food court as the boom of the exploding charge coils echoed from the other side of the barrier.

  She looked at Mr. Tomn. “I didn’t even see a control for that door.”

  He shook his head, astonished.

  She heard approaching footsteps and glanced around to see Rin jogging over debris, her rifle ready. “How did—” the sniper started to ask.

  “Forgive me,” a strong, aristocratic voice announced from her right. “I have no doubt you could have handled that cannon, but we’re rather short of time, I’m afraid, so I took the liberty.”

  Malya’s head whipped around, and Rin slipped on fallen decking as she tried to raise her weapon. Through the wreckage of an assault shuttle breach stepped a tall man dressed in scarlet, gold, and black. His high-collared cloak and pressed trousers had a vaguely military cut, though his cuffed boots and flowing brown hair were nothing like regulation. As they watched, a woman of regal bearing and ruffled clothes appeared from behind him. A rapier rested casually in her hand, and she regarded the women with an experienced fighter’s dispassionate appraisal.

  The man halted in the middle of the ruined corridor, set his hands on his hips, and smiled. “Introductions are in order. My name is Augustus Harker, captain of the corsair ship Marianne.” He bowed from the waist. “At your service.”

  Rin and Malya exchanged shocked glances. Mr. Tomn could not stop staring at the man. Something moved in the shadow from which the man had come, and Rin had her rifle up in an instant. Malya had just enough time to glimpse the huge form moving with impossible grace through the rubble.

  “Noh,” Rin shouted as she sighted down the barrel.

  A red and amber flash knocked the weapon aside. The shot flew into the bulkhead door, putting a proper dent in it.

  The flash resolved into a large, ancient parrot that swooped through the narrow space to settle on Captain Harker’s shoulder.

  The pirate put up his hands. “Stay your weapons,” he said with reassuring authority. “This man means you no harm, I assure you.”

  The women turned disbelieving eyes on the hulking, demonic form, his red skin painted in strange white patterns.

  “Apologies, again, but Kenobo here is an exile from his people, and he is as much their enemy as you are.”

  The noh bowed deeply to them, with bent knee, his bound hair and curling beard brushing the floor.

  Malya spoke in an assured tone that matched Harker’s. “You keep strange company, even for a pirate. What’s your interest in talking instead of attacking?”

  The pirate’s manners and bearing reminded her too much of a thousand state functions before she had fled Ulyxis.

  Mr. Tomn climbed higher on Sedaris and stared intently at the strange crew.

  “Excellent, to business,” Harker said, looking straight at Malya. “I have come to enlist your aid, your highness. We have an opportunity to stop the Calamity, and I need your help.”

  Malya stared for a second. “You—” she sputtered. “You attacked this ship, attacked all these people, just because you wanted to get my help?”

  Harker looked genuinely apologetic. “No, not precisely. I came here for you and one other. Calico Kate attacked this ship because she believes that the reigning Cerci Prime champion and Crown Princess of Ulyxis must travel in unimaginable opulence.” He shrugged. “Since I needed her help, I did not correct her error.”

  “Wait, her and one other?” Rin asked.

  “Yes,” Harker replied, “most astute. Sadly, Miss Farrah, not you, I’m afraid—though you would be most helpful and very welcome. No, the other is not here, but because Kate and Vance accompanied me, and because we attacked a civilian transport with important diplomatic personages aboard—” he nodded to Malya—“he will be on our trail very soon. Which is partly the cause of our undignified haste.”

  “Now wait just one minute,” Malya said, esper rising around her. “I’m not—”

  Harker raised his hands. “Your highness, please listen. Our galaxy, our universe, is out of time. I can gain us a little more and perhaps save us all, but I cannot do it alone. I require help—your help, specifically. I know you have many questions, and I will answer all of them that I can, but we’ve no time. For now, on faith alone, you must believe that I know how to save this galaxy from the Darkspace Calamity, and I need you to accomplish that.” He held out his hand. “Will you join me?”

  Malya hesitated. She glanced at Rin, who could only stare, dumbstruck. She looked to Mr. Tomn. The lop-eared cypher studied the parrot on Harker’s shoulder like he could see its atoms. The parrot stared back.

  Mr. Tomn frowned. “This is unusual.”

  “Something is interfering,” the parrot said.

  Malya blinked. The parrot hadn’t spoken; no sound came from its beak. Yet she would swear that the words she heard in her head originated from the avian cypher.

  “We all know,” Mr. Tomn said, and glanced at Kenobo.

  “Something else. We’ve discovered what, and we have a chance to stop them.”

  Mr. Tomn shook his head. “There isn’t time.”

  “There will be,” the parrot replied.

  “Oh,” Mr. Tomn said, his demeanor shifting sharply. “Oh. That game. And if the Source appears while we’re gone?”

  “Then we’ll actually have the chance to do this properly.”

  Malya glanced from one cypher to the other. “One of you needs to explain what you two are talking about,” she demanded.

  Mr. Tomn slowly turned to her. “Hope,” he said softly.

  “This is what you were looking for here, isn’t it?” she demanded.

  “I—” He hesitated an instant before nodding firmly. “Yes, I think so. I think that this is our path.” He shot her a rueful grin. “Remember when you said that if you could do something to help, you would? Well, this is it. I say we go.”

  Malya turned back at Rin, finding no more words than she had a moment before. The sniper looked frightened, something Malya could not remember ever seeing before, but Rin hefted her rifle all the same. “You’re not going without me.”

  For no more reason than that, the princess felt infinitely better. She rounded on Harker. “We’ll go. But I bring my crew.”

  “Of course,” Harker replied. “I’d hoped as much. I have two boarding shuttles standing by.”

  The woman behind him produced a small datapad and tapped a few keys.

  “Moffet is transferring their locations to your relic. Inform your friends and have them meet us as quickly as possible. We must be gone before Kate realizes she’s been manipulated.”

  “When do you figure that will happen?” Malya asked.

  Harker summoned a chronometer display from the datalink disguised on his left forearm. “Oh, any minute now.”

  Chapter 4

  Tranquil Wind, cargo hold 7

  Cordelia’s rifle sliced clean through four pirates and the cargo containers behind them but missed the large man with the mechanical arm. Despite everythin
g, he seemed to be laughing. She had just killed several of his friends, and not only did he not care, he actually seemed to enjoy the fight immensely. She triggered her thrusters, flying left behind an overturned loader as pistol bolts flashed and hissed around her. She set her rifle to quick recharge—she did not have many of those strong shots left—and engaged the Interspace Network. The image and profile of the pirate captain Golden Vance appeared on her overlay a second later. Cordelia would have swallowed nervously if she could have.

  “Hey, miss helpful,” Betty said from behind more cargo crates a few feet away. “You okay over there?”

  Cordelia nodded. “I’m fine, yes.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the pirates fanning out through the cargo hold in an attempt to flank the pit crew. “That’s Golden Vance. He’s a very bad man.”

  Betty looked back, dumbfounded. “You don’t say.” She snapped off a shot that blew away the pirates’ cover and stalled their advance.

  Cordelia switched her view, dismissing the profile for a schematic of the cargo bay. She studied it for a second. “They’re not trying for the arboretum,” she called to Betty.

  Betty shot her a confused, incredulous look. Her crew was frantically trying to uncrate a second exo-frame. Between the first salvage mecha they had put into the fight and the giant, vaguely simian shape of Betty’s chee best friend Lug, the pit crew had a tight hold on the port side approach to the arboretum.

  “They’re coming around the wrong side.” Cordelia started to point to something on her overlay, shook her head, cleared the overlay, and pointed off to her left. “That way leads to engineering.”