by Mick Fraser
Dizzy’s voiced pierced the sudden silence. “You still here, boss? Did we get her?”
Drenno, groaning, turned his head. In the centre of the room, floating in the glowing blue anti-grav orb, was the girl he’d first seen in the holosphere thirty-two hours ago, unconscious but alive. Relieved, he let his head thump back against the floor.
“We got her, Diz. She’s here.”
“Have we still got a cargo hold?”
“Mostly…” Drenno grunted, not bothering to rise. He stared at the girl from his spot on the floor. “Now we just need to figure out why you’re here.”
PART TWO
~THE SHADOWSTAR~
Should we pass even the slightest fragment of our supposedly vast knowledge down to those who supersede us, it should be this, and this alone: after all we have learned, after all we have seen, after all we have accomplished, a simple, undeniable truth remains.
Of the Galaxy, we know nothing.
From an address by General Archer Roe, co-founder of the Central Systems Military
CHAPTER 7
~HUMAN, ALL THE WAY THROUGH~
THERE WAS A beeping, high and incessant, coming from far away but getting closer. It sounded like one of the monitors a hospital used to track a patient’s vital signs. Given Angela’s recent experiences, she half-expected it to be a reversing truck.
The world came into focus slowly, painfully, like looking through pouring honey. She was in a warm, grey room that smelled vaguely of… actually, she wasn’t sure what it smelled of, but it was the smell she noticed first. It wasn’t particularly offensive. It was a dull brown smell, a wet smell, like a cat that had come in from the rain. She realised almost immediately that she was only focusing on odours to avoid focusing on the fact that she was lying on some kind of surgical gurney. Angela had never been prone to irrational panic and she wasn’t going to start now.
She was able to turn her head, which revealed a chrome table stocked with various vials and jars but, thank God, no surgical implements. A huge monitor on the wall above her displayed the image of a human female, all the veins and organs highlighted, surrounded by scrolling text in a language Angela had never seen; it had the efficiency of Japanese but the flair of Arabic. The anatomy on display was likely a representation of her own. This was not a comfort.
There were strip lights embedded in the ceiling, giving off an oddly white luminosity. Angela’s eyes followed them across the chrome roof, around a bundle of pipes and wires fed through the far wall, down past a bank of monitors, to the smooth white door – beside which sat a man and a woman. They were talking quietly, paying her no attention. She almost spoke, until she heard the word “sedated”. She closed her eyes, concentrating. She heard the man’s voice; he sounded British.
“...Six-Tails says he can’t keep her sedated the whole way. He’s given her enough Thenzyne to drop a trask, and she’s fighting it. Impressive as that is, she’s going to wake up eventually.”
“Will she arc again?” The girl’s voice, smooth, honeyed.
Arc? What the hell did that mean?
“If that’s what it is. Maybe. Keeping her calm seems to be important. Last thing we want is her arcing her way into the Aethir core. Then we’re all dead—”
At the word “dead” she let out an involuntary gasp, just a small one, but the conversation ceased. She opened her eyes to see them looking at her.
The man was handsome, black, around forty-five, with a shaved head now dusted with black stubble, and a dark beard shot through with grey and tiny specks of white. He was wearing a dark shirt and pants with what looked like black motorcycle boots buckled up to the knees. Angela saw that he had a pale grey device, too dull to be metallic and slimmer than a twig, attached to his right brow. He had deep, dark, unfriendly eyes; he smiled as he rose and his eyes became friendly. He looked almost boyish when he smiled, despite his salt-and-pepper beard.
The young woman would take a little time. For a start, she was purple. Not purple like Barney the Dinosaur was purple, but a pale indigo that reminded Angela of the colour people turned when they choked. She was much younger, maybe eighteen or nineteen. Her long hair was almost shockingly white, and her eyes were like brushed gold. Her almost perfect cheekbones were decorated with three faint white lines that might have been tattoos. Despite the differences in skin and hair colour, the resemblance between her and the older man was disconcertingly stark. She also wore one of those slim grey devices on her brow.
The man spoke first. “Hi there. You’ve had a little system shock, kid. You need to take it easy for a couple of turns.” He paused. “I’m Captain Ellys Drenno. This is my daughter, Gaelan, and this is our ship. You remember your name?”
Angela stared from one to the other, momentarily unable to respond. Her throat was as dry as a stack of old leaves and it had become painful to swallow. She tried to ask for a drink, but only managed a weak croak. The odd-coloured girl put her head on one side, curious, while the man – Drenno? – produced a beaker from somewhere and held it to Angela’s lips. The liquid was refreshing, but tasted slightly bitter, metallic even.
“What is that?” she asked with some considerable effort.
Drenno looked at the beaker as though she’d asked a stupid question. “Water. I conjured you’d be thirsty.”
“Tastes weird,” she whispered. “Why was I sedated?”
He glanced at the girl, Gaelan. “It’s for your own good, trust me. You were zipping around all over the place while you were out. You arc to the wrong place in a functional starfighter, you’ll be dead in a heartbeat.”
“Arc?” She thumped her head back down on the gurney. “Where am I?”
He half-smiled. “That one’s going to take some time. What’s your name? You remember it?”
She looked back towards the screen displaying her anatomy. Her eyes were drawn to the beating heart, depicted as a fuzzy blob of blue energy from which tendrils snaked in red, white and green. She turned back. “Angela. Angela Strange.”
Drenno smiled again, this time with more feeling. “Okay.” He pulled his chair a little closer and sat down. Gaelan perched herself on the counter-top beneath the flat-screen. She wore a black flightsuit with short sleeves, fingerless gloves, and military-style boots. Angela pulled herself up and looked down, groping at her neck and her St. Anthony medallion, sighing with relief that it was there. She was still in her running pants, hoodie and trainers, but they were streaked with stains and dirt. One leg of her pants was torn in two places. She got sudden vivid flashes of recent events: running from home, catching the splinters in her shoulder, the car crash and explosion in Benjamin Park, the ship—
The ship.
She suddenly felt light-headed. “When you say ship, you don’t mean like a sail-boat... do you?”
Drenno shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t.”
“Thought not. And I suppose you’re not English, either?”
“I don’t know what English is. I’m not from anywhere you know.”
Her stomach rolled over and she steadied herself with one palm flat on the gurney. “Alright,” she said levelly. “So: where am I? Where are… we?”
“We’re in the med-lab of my starfighter, the Shadowstar. We rescued you from either a kidnapping or assassination by agents of Tess Evayne, High Sceptress of the Reach. And I’m guessing you don’t have a damn clue what I’m talking about...”
Angela blinked. “Star-fighter? You mean like a space-ship?”
Gaelan chuckled sarcastically. “She’s cute, do’vah. Can we keep her?”
“Back off!” Angela snapped, her anger flaring on instinct. “This is hardly a normal day.”
Drenno held up a hand, shooting his daughter a look. “Yes, we’re in a space-faring vessel, currently in shallow orbit of a world called Orren. And we’re roughly forty-three thousand light years from Earth.”
Angela closed her eyes, trying to remember any facts she could from her school science lessons. “Light years? As i
n 6-trillion-miles-long light years?”
“I don’t know what a mile is, but for us it was five-hundred hyper-spans. That’s a very, very long way. Moreover, the way back is closed now. I’m sorry.”
Closed? So she was trapped here? “My granddad!” she shouted, louder than she intended. “God, he’ll think I’m dead. Can I talk to him? A – a phone-call? Or something? Whatever you have here in space, forty-three thousand light years from Earth. I imagine you run up some serious bills.”
Drenno stood, raising both hands placatingly. “Hey, hey. Calm down, kid. I don’t want you to get all… glowy… again.”
“Calm? I’m completely calm. My house was invaded by… aliens?… last night, I was almost killed – what, twice? Three times? And now I’m on a spaceship with a not-English Englishman and a girl who appears to be purple, forty-three thousand times six trillion miles from Templeton. Oh, and I’m fairly sure I’ve recently developed an ability to teleport...”
“Maybe you need some time to process?”
“Process? Process what? This is all incredibly normal information. I mean, I haven’t brushed my teeth since yesterday morning. Would I be so acutely aware of that if this was some kind of psychotic delusion?”
Drenno nodded. “You need time to process. You know what? This was bound to be a shock when your people have barely made it past your moon. It’s my fault.”
“They were taking people’s brains...” she said suddenly, as the realisation hit home that she had recently been in the grip of an individual who would have happily removed her skull.
Drenno gave his daughter a pained look. “That’s called necromining,” he said. “Highly illegal, but it bypasses the lengthy business of interrogation. Did they... hurt anyone you know. Or knew?”
She gave him a mildly disgusted look. “No. No one I know. Just a few down-and-outs. Nobody anybody would miss.”
He nodded sagely. “That makes sense.”
Oddly, Angela was reminded of a time when she had sneaked out of her house in the middle of winter to go tobogganing in an old car door down Devil’s Drop, a sixty-yard hill in the woods near her granddad’s house. She’d gone down it at such speed she hadn’t had the chance to really get scared, and so when she hit the sharp incline at the foot of the hill and was propelled into the air to strike the nearest tree with some considerable force, she slumped down in a little heap in the snow, and was suddenly too numb with belated fear to feel anything else. Not the pain, not the cold, not concern for the well-being of her teenage limbs. She’d been numbed by fear, everywhere but her stomach. Her stomach burned. It was burning now.
“Why is she purple?”
Gaelan answered. “Because I’m morbidly fascinated. You want to see another colour?”
Drenno tutted. “Gaelan! Play nice. She’s half-Avellian, Angela. Their skin-colour is mood-specific. Right now, she’s concerned. That’s what indigo means.”
Angela nodded amicably. “Of course. She’s an alien.”
Gaelan gave her a disconcerting smile, and her skin-tone dulled slightly. “We’re all aliens, dearheart. Let’s not be rude.”
Angela ignored her and focused on Drenno. “But you look human...”
“I am human. All the way through. Most of my crew aren’t though.”
She wrinkled her brow. “So you’re from Earth? Originally, right?”
“No: I’m Orren-born. Look, it’s a hell of a stack to explain, and that’s not really my strong side. Rathe is on his way up. He’s better at this than me. Don’t worry: he’s human, too. Leastways, as far as I know.”
Angela took another sip of the bitter water, wincing at a mild stab of pain in her shoulder. She reached up to feel the back of a rough cloth bandage.
“The Exethan that came after you were a little rough, as usual. You had some shrapnel back there,” Drenno explained. “Six-Tails took it out and closed you up. Accelerated recovery stings a lot more than healing at your own good pace. You’ll get used to it.”
“Exethan...” she whispered. “What’s an Exe—?” She jumped at a sudden bing, like a microwave finishing its cycle, as the door slid open to reveal an older man, this one in his late fifties to early sixties. He was dressed in a white shirt and a dark jacket of leather and fur; his steel grey hair was swept back, and a square-cut beard the colour of concrete concealed much of his face. He was tall and broad, looked strong rather than stern, and Angela was reminded immediately of her granddad. When he smiled at her warmly as he entered the room, she felt a sharp pang of loss.
Drenno rose. “Angela Strange, meet Rathe Massai. He’s… kind of our conscience.”
She felt a sudden heat building in her limbs, and Drenno moved quickly, resting a hand on her wrist. “Relax,” he breathed. “Take it easy.”
Looking down, she saw the source of his concern: her skin was glittering again. She stared for a moment, breathing slowly until the glow subsided, the pain with it. It left in its place a coldness, like a flood of icy water through her veins. “What’s happening to me? Do you know? You know, right?”
Drenno looked at Rathe. “I have an idea, yeah. Problem being, it’s impossible.”
She blinked, annoyed. “Well, that’s comforting.”
Rathe pulled Drenno’s chair forward, sitting down before her so that he had to look up to address her. He put both his hands, warm and rough, on her wrists. “What’s happening to you may be the very reason we sought you out, Angela. We don’t know yet why you’re important, only that you are. Our enemy – a very prominent figure – has been scouring Known Space for you for almost a decade. Luckily for you, we got to you before she did.”
“She?”
The old man sat back. “Tess Evayne, ruler of the Melrasi Reach.”
Angela squeezed shut her eyes. Words and names circled one another in her head, like a pack of dogs chasing each other’s tails. Rathe seemed to recognise her confusion.
“Melrasi is a collection of star systems – you understand what they are, yes?”
“I think so. Planets orbiting a sun.”
“Reductive, but yes, dearheart. The Reach is our system of government, and Tess Evayne sits atop it all. It is a seat she did not earn cleanly.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
The three of them exchanged glances, and then Captain Drenno shrugged. Rathe tutted him. “That we don’t know. Evayne is dangerous; she has proved time and again that she is willing to kill to further her own legend, and if she is looking for you, then we must keep you from her. Luckily, we know someone who may know more. But first, you need to be examined. Six-Tails has some concerns about the arcing, and a possible solution.”
“Arcing?”
“When you hurt, and glow, you’re arcing. That is, your body is dissolving into light and reassembling elsewhere. We may have a method to help you regulate it before it… does more permanent harm.”
As he stood, Angela grabbed his arm. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”
He smiled softly, resting his hand on hers. She loosened her grip. “You will have answers, I promise you,” he told her. “But flooding you with knowledge won’t help. Right now, you are safe. That is of primary concern. Once you’re properly attired and, I suspect, fed, we will debrief the crew. For now, try to stay calm.”
“One thing...” she said, releasing his arm.
“Of course.”
“You said this Evayne is looking for me, but you don’t know why – only that I’m important somehow, right?”
“Be thankful, Earth-born,” Gaelan warned, her skin shifting to a pale blue. “We could have left you to the Sceptress.”
Drenno half-turned. “Why don’t you find Angela some clothes, len’vaal? She’s about your size.”
Gaelan smiled without humour and, with a lingering look at Angela, left the room.
Rathe nodded. “Continue...”
Angela stared at the closed door a moment, then sighed. None of this was making sense. �
�So what made you come looking for me? How did you know I was important?”
Drenno rubbed a hand across his face, not meeting the older man’s eyes. “We found out about you in an intercepted broadwave, Angela. We didn’t know you were human. We didn’t know you were a life-form at all. Your designated cipher was Aedhasahr.”
She looked from one to the other, becoming frustrated. “And? What does that mean?”
Rathe seemed suddenly older, as though the question – or its answer – was a heavy weight around his neck. “Weapon,” he said, gravely. “It means weapon.”
CHAPTER 8
~INTRODUCTIONS~
THE DISTANT SUN hung unfettered in the darkness, a white and silver starburst against a black velvet backdrop. Its light, even at this distance, was too bright to gaze upon directly, which in its own way was humbling. Below it, far closer and larger, the northern hemisphere of the planet Orren eclipsed the right side window, ringed by a pale corona and crowned by white clouds of vapour. The space around it was as busy as a highway, buzzing with satellites and orbital structures, great black constructions peppered with blinking lights that sat in slow rotation around the world. The Shadowstar was currently moored to one such structure, so Rathe had said, while it was refuelled and restocked.
Angela, forehead resting against the warm glass, one hand up to steady her, felt tears forming at the sight. Scientists and star-gazers on Earth spent their lives wondering if they were alone in the universe; people died in their hundreds of thousands every day, never knowing the answer. And now Angela had the answer – or at least, a fragment of one – and she had seen more in the last few hours than the people of Earth had seen in a hundred billion lifetimes.