Jumpship Hope

by Adria Laycraft

  “You don’t know what caused the illness?” Janlin said, fully worried now. “Then how do you know this will help?”

  Anaya struggled for words. “Yipho good,” she tried. “No hurt you. Pease.”

  Janlin thought it through. She was no fan of needles and would grill the med-bay staff every time they injected their crazy nano-bots. She just wouldn’t blithely let people stick stuff in her bloodstream without knowing what the ingredients were.

  Still, she had to trust Anaya, or she might as well jump out the nearest airlock and be done with it. Unless this was all some lovely dream—Janlin nearly laughed out loud at this thought. Some days it did feel like she’d fallen down a rabbit hole. She wondered where such an expression had come from, and in doing so didn’t even know Yipho had approached until she looked up into his eyes. They were a deeper blue than Anaya’s.

  “Okay,” she said, holding out her arm. Normally she would look away, but she watched Yipho with narrowed eyes.

  “Ouch,” she said in reflex. Yipho chuffed and went on his way, looking entirely too pleased with himself as far as Janlin was concerned.

  Anaya studied the holo image Janlin had up. The planet hung in the blackness of space, so reminiscent of her last view of Earth, except this marble had much more green, and a ton of water.

  “Huantag looks like a wet place,” Janlin commented.

  “Good home,” Anaya said. “Jahnin go soon.”

  “Tell me more about the Huantag,” Janlin asked. “Why can’t you live there and work with them to create a new home?”

  “No Gitane, no Imag . . . go there anymore. Huantag use . . .” Here she floundered, and Janlin saw that it was due to more than a lack of words. Anaya’s fists clenched. “They make us go.”

  “They barred you?”

  “Yes.” It came out like a growl, and Janlin shifted uncomfortably in the presence of such anger. Still, good to know about this bad blood between them. She needed to get a measure of what she’d be up against.

  “Why do the Imag send humans there? And why do they trade with Huantag and you don’t?”

  “Imag no honour.” Bluntly said, and Janlin was surprised that Anaya had learned such a word. She wished she had known Victor better.

  “So, the Imag trade with the Huantag?” At the confirmation of this, Janlin asked the most worrisome question. “Do the Huantag use humans as slaves, then?”

  “What this word, s-aaves?”

  Janlin wondered how to rephrase it. “Are the Huantag good to humans, or bad like Imag?”

  “Anaya no—not—know. No human ever go from Huantag.”

  Going in blind. Great. If the Huantag were trading or buying humans from the Imag, chances were good they weren’t much different. Or they ate them for dinner. A sudden flashback to her day on Earth made her stomach churn, and she redirected her thoughts to the problem at hand. From what she had to go on, this didn’t look good, and the plan still didn’t clearly explain how she would get back off the planet.

  “How do you know they are still alive?” She shivered at the mental images she couldn’t shake.

  Anaya shrugged, her way of saying “no”, and pointed to Gitane writing around the holo. “Human okay,” she said, and she put up ten digits, spread wide, then closed them and flashed them again, then several more times, Janlin carefully counting .

  “One hundred and twelve humans on the planet,” Janlin said, half to herself. “Wow. Are they spread all over? Can you tell that?”

  “Here.” Anaya pointed at an area in the northern hemisphere, on the largest continent. In this case, though, large was relative. This land mass couldn’t be much bigger than Australia.

  Janlin looked at Anaya, then at the display again. “Is that real, like looking through a window?” Anaya didn’t understand this analogy, but Janlin had a good idea it was a real-time vid. It didn’t have that haze of a holo, and she could see the movement of weather patterns. Fascinating technology, really.

  “Anaya, you say you don’t want a war with the Imag, but you’re willing to steal the Jumpship from them. Won’t that start a war?”

  “Yes, so no war before.”

  Janlin sighed. “I still can’t see why you can’t try and save the humans while getting the ship.”

  Anaya’s face puckered. “Too much. Getting ’ip too much . . . add humans too . . .” She let her words trail away, watching. Janlin had to admit she understood. Still, she wasn’t about to let her friends and crewmates be left with the Imag.

  “I think it would be worth trying. You will win them over with your ability to speak our language and a message from me.”

  Anaya looked sceptical.

  “Your plan might not include this, but it’s really important to me. I have friends there.”

  After a long silence, Anaya tried her nod again. “Okay, Jahnin. We try get humans too.”

  Janlin breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

  Anaya went about her business and Janlin sat and watched the image again. This was all she had to go on, her only source of information on her destination.

  What kinds of people were these Huantag? And the question of the day: what kind of people would forbid others from the only habitable planet in the system? She knew in her head she only had one side of the story, but her heart considered Anaya an ally and could see no reason for her to lie.

  Janlin called to Anaya.

  “When I find humans down there,” she said, pointing at the image now floating above the desk, “how do we get back to you?”

  Anaya gave her a long look, and Janlin really wished she could read her facial expressions better. It brought her back to the fact that she trusted a stranger in this, an alien stranger. Still, what choice did she have? She had to try for this way home, for Stepper’s memory, and for Gordon and Ursula.

  Anaya still didn’t make a move or venture to speak, and Janlin began to wonder just what she was thinking. Everything up to this point seemed in good faith; why now did Janlin suddenly feel so . . . suspicious?

  “I need to know this, Anaya. You want me to help you, to trust you . . . you have to trust me, too.”

  With a deep breath, Anaya went to a wall panel and removed a device that fit nicely in her grip. She handed it to Janlin. It wasn’t such a perfect fit in a human’s soft hands, but it was still portable, light and thin. Anaya held out her hand to take it back, and began fiddling with it. Janlin assumed she programmed it to fulfil some need. Was it a communication device?

  Anaya brought it to her mouth and gurgled into it, and was quickly answered. Janlin heard the voice echo both from the device and from the control room. It gave her a thrill to know she had guessed right.

  “How does it work? Can I call you?” Janlin asked as Anaya handed it back to her.

  “Yes.” She came around beside her and pointed first to a dial switch embedded on the side, then to a series of buttons on top. “You call when away from Huantag. Keep secret! Will work if ’ip not too far.”

  “So, while you’re away getting the Hope, I can’t reach you?” Anaya confirmed this. “But what if you want to call me, and I’m with some of these Huantag?”

  Anaya gave one of her toothy grins and pressed a button. “This turn off. Keep power good.”

  “Okay. Perfect. So, you’ll drop me off down there—”

  Anaya shrugged a negative. “Gitane cannot go to Huantag. Imag cannot go. No people from Yiyau.” She walked over to the door, engaged the shield, and indicated the door controls. “Huantag have bigger,” she said, spreading her arms wide and moving them as if around a large ball. “Stop Gitane and Imag. Gitane get ’ip, you turn this off, we come get humans.”

  Janlin took a wild guess. “They have shields, like these doors, that block you from going there?”

  “Yes. You turn off shhhh—” It came out more like a spit, and she gave up with a frustrated twist of her lips. “Turn dis off, Anaya go, get you.”

  “So how am I gettin
g down there?”

  “Go there,” Anaya said, and she zoomed in on an orbital space station sailing along over the ocean. “Find . . .” Here Anaya ran out of words again, so she tapped the board and brought up a smaller image to one side. It looked to be a crate of some kind, and she emphasized the need to choose one with a certain collection of markings.

  “This one Huantag,” she said. “That Imag. No go Imag.”

  Janlin couldn’t agree more.

  “Who owns the station?” Janlin asked. When Anaya was slow to reply, Janlin persisted. “Imag?” All she got was a hesitant pull of the mouth. “Huantag?”

  Anaya huffed. “Imag and Huantag,” she said, and it was an admission somehow.

  “So how do I get on station?” And why was Anaya suddenly so evasive?

  Anaya just stared at the holo images that floated before them. Janlin groaned.

  “You don’t know, do you?” Another shrug. Janlin studied the holos with her, thinking hard. “Can you show me the station closer, before it goes out of sight around the planet?”

  Anaya complied, and the result was like riding a camera as it zoomed through space. Janlin blinked, a little dizzy from the effect.

  “Look! Whose ship is that?”

  “Imag,” Anaya said without hesitation. Janlin remembered the Imag ship traveling the same way they were. No wonder they were hanging back.

  “We followed them all the way without being noticed?”

  Anaya chuffed. “No. Imag much faster. This new Imag ’ip. They have many. We see with tiny ’ip.”

  Janlin watched as the Imag docked with the station. “Why can’t you do that? Sneak in like you did with the big Imag ship.”

  “Huantag no trade with Gitane.”

  Janlin watched the view of the Imag ship as it curved around the station in its orbital pattern. Soon it would be out of their line of sight.

  “Are we going to wait until it comes back around?”

  “Yes,” Anaya said. Despite only a few weeks spent together Janlin still knew that Anaya was holding something back. “Yes and no,” she then added when she noticed Janlin’s speculative look.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Anaya looked away. “Gitane ’ip go before—” and she indicated the station, using her own word for it, “—come back.”

  This ship . . . what? And just where was she in this equation? Janlin’s heart thudded as she considered possibilities.

  “Do you have a lander of some kind, a small ship to take me? I can fly it myself.” That would be ideal.

  “No,” Anaya said with a shrug.

  Too good to be true, that one. “Then what? How am I to get on station?” And why won’t the Huantag trade with you if they will with the Imag? There was a lot more going on here than Janlin knew, and just knowing that made her uncomfortable. What else didn’t she know that might be important?

  “You go out. Wait for station.”

  Janlin stared, belatedly realizing her mouth hung open. “Out. As in space walk?”

  Anaya didn’t understand, but she gestured for Janlin to follow her. As they crossed the control room and headed into the airlock, every eye seemed to follow them. Janlin became more and more uncomfortable.

  In the airlock there were multiple compartments of various sizes, all holding essential things for a space-faring vehicle. All along one wall were the largest of these, and they held what could only be EVA suits . . . of course.

  “So, I’m supposed to just hang out in a space suit not designed for humans, waiting for a station to go sailing by, and somehow get to it and, what, ring the doorbell?”

  Anaya didn’t follow more than half of what she said, but there was no mistaking her tone of voice. “Yes. You go to Huantag, stop Huantag barring Gitane. Anaya go, get ’ip, come get humans. Not easy, but we must. Yes?”

  Right. Put in that light, Janlin just might have the easier of the two jobs. Still . . .

  “How long do I have? Oh, never mind, you can’t answer that question in a way I can understand.” Frustration mounted, but it gave her something to focus on instead of fear. “This one?” she said, pointing at the compartment Anaya had opened.

  “Yes. Anaya’s,” she said, tapping her chest.

  “Okay, show me how it works.”

  It took a long time to get Janlin suited up, and still she wondered if she really knew how to run the damned thing, especially the jet pack that was to propel her in the right direction. Through it all she kept wondering how much time she had before the station came around. She’d never paid any attention to things like that, and it wouldn’t really matter what she knew if this planet was larger or smaller, or if the station moved slower or faster than the ones on Earth . . .

  She stopped her train of thought with a huge mental effort. It did her no good to keep thinking in that vein. Anaya knew, and she would make sure she was on her way in good time.

  Right?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE LOCK SHIFTED and whirred, loud enough she could hear it through the suit and the roaring of her blood. Beyond, the landscape of a strange world spun below, filling her vision, giving her the sensation of being about to jump . . . and fall.

  “Jahnin, go,” came Anaya’s voice in her ear.

  Janlin’s grip on the safety rungs either side of her did not loosen. Her fingers were swimming in the gloves of the suit, but the material was flexible enough that she could still hold on, and hold she did.

  “Jahnin, go now.”

  She had to go out there. Her dad might still be down there, still alive. She imagined seeing him, getting a big hug, laughing about it all.

  The station was a tiny dot in the distance, and timing was crucial. She could see the planet’s surface beyond, filling the frame, revealing plenty of places for her to go splat.

  “Jahnin, pease go.” Anaya’s voice sounded desperate.

  She closed her eyes and focused on the muscles of her left hand. One by one she let the fingers loosen until only the index finger and thumb looped the handle. Then she turned her attention on the right hand.

  “Jahnin!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m going,” she muttered. She opened her eyes but kept her gaze on the floor in front of her feet, and let go. One step. Two. All too soon she was out of floor. Before she could freeze up again, she launched her body into the emptiness before her.

  “Good,” Anaya said, and Janlin found her calm voice chuffing in her ear reassuring. “Jahnin—”

  “I will remember, Anaya. You get out of here before you get yourself in trouble. Without you, there is no hope for us at all.”

  A long silence followed this remark . . . too long. “Tank you, Jahnin.”

  Janlin wondered at the tinge of sadness she thought she heard. Probably another misunderstanding between races, she decided, and turned her attention on her task. A little experimental jab at one button began a lazy spiral, and despite a little jab of the other she found herself looking at Anaya’s ship. It looked just like any spaceship should.

  For all our differences . . .

  The thought had come so many times. How many lives went on in the cosmos? It must be a number beyond comprehension.

  It was startling how far away the ship was already, but little jets fired and she realized that they were nudging the ship away gently. Janlin took a deep breath and nudged her own jets to life, turning her back on her ally and newest friend.

  She forced her gaze past the beauty of the landscape swirling by and scanned for the station. Everything moved in slow motion, except for the station, which loomed closer on a trajectory that would—should—sail right past her. How would she do this? Panic threatened to consume all rational thought. She gasped for breath, sure now the settings weren’t right for a human, or that there was some problem with the suit.

  Dots danced in her vision.

  Hyperventilating, that’s what she was doing. She closed her eyes despite all her senses screaming at her not to, and took deep breaths i
n through her nose, one after another, until her heart rate slowed. When she opened her eyes, the station loomed closer than ever, large enough now that she could make out details of the ship docked at the centre of the rotating ring. The Imag ship was much larger than Anaya’s.

  If she could make her own trajectory match the station, she would line up nicely alongside. She would need to fire the jets just right. She understood Anaya’s halting explanations now. She wasn’t shooting straight for the station, but heading for where it was going to be once she was in the same vicinity.

  Still, things were moving too fast. Had she waited a moment too long to launch out the airlock? That would be fatal, if she had. She should be able to compensate, though. Anaya had told her she had more than enough power in the jets, and plenty of air for a chase if necessary. Or something to that effect.

  Could she wait for another pass of the station? Did she have that much air? It seemed to Janlin to take a couple of hours for an orbit, give or take.

  Questions, questions, always with the questions. She tweaked the jets, settling on her course, sure that she had enough momentum if she could simply control her trajectory.

  She just might make it. Her breath came short again.

  Looking for a distraction, she studied the planet’s surface. On the islands dotting the ocean she could make out mountain ranges, river basins, and open range. The strangest part was the green marble look, as opposed to Earth’s blue.

  The station passed before her and on. Adrenaline surged, and her fingers fumbled over the controls of the jets. She would have to fire hard and long to catch it now, and she only hoped there was enough fuel to get her there.

  Now she came in on the station from behind, along the edge of the ring. The place was huge! Closer and closer. The jets cut out.

  “No!” Janlin cried, but a second later she realized if they fired much longer, she might end up like a bug on a windshield.

  She stretched out her arms, palms out, scanning the ring for some way in. There were windows, here and there, occasionally a large one, but she saw no movement. What would an alien think if they looked out now?