This Starry Deep

by Adam P. Knave

Something clicked hard in my head.

  “You’re migrating.”

  “Excuse me?” Tslakog asked, sounding slightly offended. Maybe he didn’t know that word.

  “Birds. Do you have birds on your planets?”

  “Yes, I know the word, and the concept you mean by it, and we have such creatures on our worlds.”

  “You’re like them.”

  “Birds? They are lower species, brainless! Are you saying—”

  “I’m not saying you’re brainless, no. But - do your birds travel with the seasons, follow the good weather? Ours do.” I felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. Their ships, their suits – no matter what they looked like, they thought like birds.

  Tslakog was watching me process the idea that I might be able to trust him.

  “So you do scouting runs to each planet, to see what has changed and to see if its life can sustain your needs?” I asked carefully.

  “Yes, of course,” he answered. “I see what you are saying, we replaced evolution with technology, replacing what we may have been. Our dress, our ships, our very culture speaks of it. Though I admit, the idea you seem to have that we need you to come and tell us about ourselves is not one I am comfortable with. Still, I suppose, go on.”

  “I mean no offense. I am an outsider, of course. That just permits me an ability to see you through different eyes, not better ones,” I said.

  “And yet,” Tslakog, said, “keep in mind we are not a backward race needing to be saved by you. You will approach this with respect, or not at all. Do not think yourself a savior, human.”

  “Of course,” I told him, choosing my steps carefully. “You only range out toward the next planet you’ll be approaching, not the entire path at once. It’d cost you too much fuel, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, precisely. Much as this battle being waged now is costing us dearly. Much longer and I fear for the future of our people.”

  I had to replay what he’d said two or three times to grasp it. I’d been lost in my own thoughts at first. I believed him, everything I’d seen supported it. Which meant that they didn’t have Shae. Earth would have been far too far for them to bother with yet.

  I didn’t know who did have her, but I’d work it out soon enough. Back burnering that for a minute, I looked at the problem at hand. I didn’t want planets wiped out, but I also didn’t want this race to die. Neither would be acceptable to me. Which meant I needed to find a third option and convince everyone involved that my plan would be the only one worth trying. All I’d need was a plan worth pushing.

  “Do you trust me?” I asked Tslakog.

  “I have no reason to, I suppose,” he said, truthfully, “and yet I find that I do. You listened, when you had no cause to.”

  “Look, I want to help you guys.”

  “And your wife? The one you call Shae, who you are convinced we have?”

  I waved off his words with a hand, “You don’t have her. Never did. It doesn’t add up. Fool that I am, it doesn’t add up, but something does. And I’ll find out the truth soon enough. In the meantime, Tslakog, why don’t we work on the problem of making sure everyone survives?”

  “How would that be possible? We must hold to our route and must strip bare the planets along the way in order to live. Be wary of demanding our culture is somehow wrong because it does not fit your view and therefore needs…fixing.”

  “No,” I said, “in general, of course not, I would not presume. But this trip - for the first time, I’m guessing - the planets you come across are inhabited.”

  “Not for the first time, but certainly far more of them, and better equipped.”

  “Well then let’s solve the problem. Together.”

  “I bristle at the idea our culture is a problem.”

  “Not the culture,” I said, stumbling for a second, “but only the effects. Now, I’ll have to contact my people and get more of us working on this, it won’t be the simplest thing in the world. But in the meantime, we’ll have to stop the fighting out there. That is non-negotiable.”

  “We can agree to that, for now. So long as there is no buildup of forces. But the time we take for this may doom us by stalling. You know that.”

  “I do,” I assured him, “and I also trust my people to find a solution.”

  “Where we have not?”

  “Let’s be honest, Tslakog, you guys haven’t looked for one. Not really,” I said, locking eyes with the reptile leader. “You apologized and felt terrible but never actually looked for a solution.”

  “Because it is not a problem,”

  “It is now. Look, trusting me, risking it all on saving lives from here on out, is the price you pay for that. For risking the lives of my people. I mean no offense, or to imply a problem with your ways, outside of this event.”

  “That is agreeable,” he said. We had arrived back at his throne room. He’d showed me his people, the size of his ship, and done his job. Now it was back to work for him and for me.

  “Good man. I’ll need my equipment back, and yes that includes my gun, though you can keep the charge for it. I just feel naked without it on. While you gather that stuff up, I’ll work out how to phrase all of this to get us working as fast as possible. Faster.”

  Chapter 30 - Shae

  I INCHED PAST NEWT and took a look at the door controls. Popping out the plate and shorting it got easier each time. The door hissed open and we both ducked inside. The Dozier stood on full alert. We moved against a clock that would run down on us no matter what we did.

  The thing of it was that they’d captured me for no reason, held me captive, chased me through these halls more than once, and were supposed to be on my side. I’d run out of my capacity to care around the time I had to set off explosives that I was standing next to for a second time.

  I no longer gave a damn who they were or why they’d done it, I just intended to deal with them. Mud breathed thickly right behind me in the dark of the room we hid in. He’d come to rescue me. My son. I felt so proud of him, breaking into a Government command-class ship like this. Wasn’t easy, I knew.

  I also knew he was looking to me for direction, now that we were together. I’d been letting him lead to try and shake that out of him. Once you break onto a ship this scale, you better have a much more complete plan than Follow The Person You’re Rescuing. But he’d learn.

  Because we would both make it out of this intact. That much wasn’t even in question. No, if needed, we could bring the whole ship down. For now, however, we didn’t need that much.

  “Mud,” I whispered, “did you bring a wide-band frequency matcher?”

  “I have one,” he said, and I knew the answer before he finished, “but it’s on my ship.”

  “Supplies don’t do you any good if you don’t have them in arm’s reach.”

  “I know, Mom.” Great, now he was talking to me like he was a kid again.

  “I want to try and find your father, is all. Which means a communications room.”

  “Which will all be heavily guarded,” he felt the need to point out.

  “Exactly,” I said, “and you’ve done a great job getting us this far, but I think this will be more up my—”

  “I can still sneak, Mom, and from my glance at the layout, we’re a hallway away.”

  “All right, lead on.” I smiled so he couldn’t see it. Good, he wanted to take charge and didn’t sound like he was doing it to prove himself, but because it would be the smart tactical move. That’s my boy.

  We crept back out into the hallway and Mud stood, listening, just as I did. Stealth would rule the day for a little while longer. Once we accessed the communications array we’d become disgustingly easy targets again. But that wasn’t just yet.

  Mud sprinted down the hallway to the turn and took the risk of a quick glance. Turning back to me as I caught up with him, he held up his hands in a series of quick signals. Four guards outside the room - they’d learned from my first escape. He indicated he wanted to go first and
that I should follow after a ten count. Then he vanished around the corner.

  I counted to ten, keeping my breathing calm, making sure I wasn’t rushing the count. Surprisingly hard to do - right before a fight or explosion, your brain just wants to get the whole business over with.

  On ten I sprang around the corner, cursing inwardly at the pain in my shoulders and foot. The guards saw me, acting very surprised at seeing anyone in the hallway they were watching. I didn’t see Mud. Maybe they’d gotten him and shoved him into the control room already. Their guns raised and I made a quick choice: I’d leap directly at them and hopefully the sonics at close range wouldn’t take me down, but either way my mass would at least entangle me with one of them.

  As I coiled my legs under me, one of the guards vanished into the door well next to the communications room door. He’d fallen backward. It surprised me and the other three guards, who all turned in wonder of what the flash of motion had been. Of course, stupid me.

  Mud had camouflaged himself to the hallway colors and waited for me to spring his trap. I sprang too, at the nearest guard, while Mud took another one in the rear of the small pack down.

  I landed badly, on my injured foot, and caught a sonic blast to the left shoulder. Biting my lip hard enough to draw blood so I wouldn’t scream, I fell on the guard who’d shot me and wrenched his helmet off. Then I beat him with it. That felt good, better than it should’ve, probably. My left arm hung uselessly, though, thanks to his blast.

  Another blast hit the ground near me and I rolled away from it, taking some of the bounce along my right side. I looked up, getting my feet under me, to see Mud dislocate the shooter’s arm and drop him. Mud’d been hit, too, though. I could tell from the way he walked. He did worse with sonic blasts than humans.

  “Mud—”

  “I’ll be fine. You?”

  “Of course,” I said. I had to be, same as him. We had no choice but to be fine and keep moving. I started to grab the door lock and Mud shook his head.

  “Once we do this, they know who and where we are. Getting out of the room will be an interesting fight, no?” he asked.

  “Pretty much the way it’ll go, yes,” I said.

  He raised his sonic weapon at the door lock and fired, point blank. The lock shattered and the door shook loose. It didn’t open but it didn’t lock, either. “The hell with it, then,” he said, and grabbed the edge of the door, pulling it open.

  The techs inside the room fell too quickly to matter, Mud’s aim true and fast. I limped over to the console, my left side still a fading ball of pins and needles from the half blast I’d caught. I called up location codes and shot them to Jonah’s secure frequency, along with a coded message to let him know where I was. Time mattered, so I didn’t go into detail. Just a location pickup, really.

  “We have about two minutes before all hell breaks loose here,” I told Mud. “I could disable the entire communications array from here.”

  “I know this is a Gov ship, Mom, and they…I don’t even know what’s going on, neither do you. Do we really want to leave them drifting like that?” He had a point. I didn’t like it, I wanted to set fire to the entire ship, but he might have been right. I considered the issue as quickly as possible. If I cut communications and Jonah did come in screaming, he’d have no way to let them know. Could work for him or against him, depending on his plan.

  That assumed he’d come this time, granted. Even if he didn’t, though, we’d been knocking out guards and doing no lasting harm to them mostly because they might not know what the actual score was. And as Mud’d said, we didn’t know yet ourselves.

  “All right,” I conceded, “what if I just locked it down and encrypted it so they couldn’t use it?”

  “Can we?”

  “I can,” I said with a grin. “The array would be usable, and get incoming messages, but no one could reply without knowing our codes. It’ll still cripple them, but—”

  “It’ll also give us a good out. Nice. I’ll guard the door, you set it up.”

  Mud moved to the door, sliding it shut. We couldn’t lock it, but they couldn’t lock us in, either. One point of entry meant we had a better shot of keeping people out. That didn’t account for gas, of course.

  I got to work, pushing that all out of my mind. I’d need to reroute all communications to this station, which was an ugly hack but doable. Then I started to encrypt all outgoing messages using an old code my father used when I was small. I locked access to the console using one of the older family codes we had, so if something happened to me, Jonah or Mud could unlock it and restore the ship. Without that code they would have to flush and reinstall the entire software array, which would take days. Messy. Better to ensure the key sat with more than one person.

  The rumble of sonic blasts went off and I glanced around at the doorway. Mud was firing shots at angles against the walls of the hallway. He had four sonic guns slung over his shoulders. Must have taken them from the downed guards.

  “We’ve got incoming,” he said, voice perfectly level and normal. Like telling me the weather. Not fazed or worried. I felt another surge of pride for the man I’d helped raise.

  “I heard,” I shot back, and I turned to finish my own work. “Almost done here. Do we have an extraction plan, or is it too late for that?”

  “Too late, I think,” he said.

  “If we got into the floor below?” I asked, stomping my foot to see if it would even be possible.

  “Not sure we have enough firepower to do it, and an explosion,” he paused to fire another volley of shots, “would be too painfully obvious.”

  “I do not intend to get recaptured in this tiny room, Mud. Now let’s think.”

  I paced the room, my left side feeling much better, though my right arm was still limp. We had some explosive paste left. We could get to the floor below, sure. But then what? Given the last blast, they were probably even expecting us to try it again but actually go through this time. I’d be expecting it, if it were me in charge.

  The consoles were too heavy to move, but…I yanked a panel free and traced out the electrical wires. You shouldn’t be able to short out the whole section from here, but with a tiny bit of help from a sonic gun to disrupt a conduit or two, I might be able to do it. Wouldn’t last long, but in darkness, if we ran as fast as we could while shooting in front of us, we might be able to clear a path.

  To go where? That was the bit I got hung up on. I decided to ask the family sneak. I was good, but he could blend - he’d grown up thinking of ways to sneak that, honestly, me and Jonah couldn’t always keep up with.

  “Mud, if you had a full minute of darkness—”

  “In the whole corridor?”

  “The whole thing, for at least this section.”

  “Emergency shaft to outer hull crawlspace to the command center,” he rattled off, before firing yet another burst. He’d moved on to the second gun already.

  “The outer hull crawlspace? There’s no air there.”

  “We wouldn’t be in it for more than two minutes, and it’d be a straight drop down.”

  “All right, I can see it. But it’s thin,” I said.

  “Thin is what we have. We can use it. I see in the dark better than you, so hold my hand and if we move for all we’re worth, and I keep firing to clear a path…Mom, I think it’ll work.”

  “Then let me get you your darkness.”

  Chapter 31 - Jonah

  WE WERE AT PEACE. Surprisingly easy to arrange, as a matter of fact. Once Tslakog’s people stopped shooting, Bushfield stopped firing and held her people back. Mostly they were confused. If you pressed her on it, I know she’d admit she didn’t want to kill anyone in the process of surrender, either. Which wasn’t what was going on, either, but hey.

  The important part remained that the shooting stopped long enough for me to tell Bushfield the score, and to ensure that no one outside of the battle group knew. That felt important to me. Hodges was up to something. I could tell.


  Ships like the Washburne don’t pop into battlefield situations with no ready support. There were no support ships anywhere. I’d sent my own guys, untrained and scared, to rescue damaged Washburne escape pods. They’d performed fantastically, according to Bushfield, but there should have been medical out there. There still wasn’t. I kept chewing on the problem, but until I figured it out, I wanted to keep Hodges in the dark.

  Then there was the problem of Shae. If the Tsyfarians didn’t have her - and I really found myself convinced of that - where could she be? Of course, I also had to work out how to get the Tsyfarian migration back on track without leveling more civilizations. Looked to be a full day.

  My problem was figuring out what to solve first. The Tsyfarian invasion wave threatened the most lives. The Hodges issue came a close second. None of it mattered in the face of Shae. Could I put her first, though, and risk everyone else? If she could talk to me she’d tell me no, of course. But listening to her about this sort of thing didn’t tend to be my strong point.

  Which left me nowhere, still. So, Shae. Where was she? The Tsyfarians didn’t have her, but someone did. Why would they take her and why did Hodges—

  Everything fell into place. Or close enough. Hodges called me to get involved. I said no. Not long after, Shae vanishes and it looks like a Tsyfarian abduction. Except when it happened, we didn’t know the Tsyfarians. Hodges told me what it was and I went along, not knowing any better. There wasn’t a good reason to mistrust him, then.

  But all I’d had to go on was his word. And this was a guy who had refused to send proper support to his own field operation. He hadn’t wanted me to come out here, either. Almost as if he was setting it up to fail.

  But then why involve me at all? I’d have to ask him. I intended to ask hard. But if he’d kidnapped Shae, it would make sense. Mistake number one. He knew it’d get me into action. He’d also counted, I guessed, on being able to control me. Mistake number two.

  For whatever reason, he seemed to want to make a show of stopping the invasion but also to fail. What he’d managed to do, though, was give me everything I needed. All of the pieces fell into place and I saw a plan.