by K. Eason
If that overdressed idiot at the front of the queue ever concluded his business.
She considered marching to the front and bodily removing the obstruction. Her notoriety with the Confederation might keep her out of the brig, or at least get her out of it quickly, and she would be performing a public service.
She set her jaw and took a step sideways, out of the queue. At the same time, she noticed a growing susurrus rippling through the usual buzz of commerce and conversation, like a rising wind rattles through leaves and, if it blows hard enough, drowns out the birdsong. Not that the ambient racket of a station was like birdsong. It was a terrible metaphor.
“Excuse me,” said a voice in an unfamiliar accent among what had thus far been relentlessly standard GalSpek, from just behind and below her left shoulder. That was her mecha side, and not the one most people selected as a first approach. So she assumed, at first, that the person intended to initiate conversation with someone else, someone possessing two organic eyes and a skull not partly patched with brushed metal. But the novel accent made her turn anyway, slowly and casually, as if she were just looking around. Novelty, at this point in her queueing experience, was of paramount importance.
Then Grytt saw her first alw, and it took every scrap of remembering how much she hated to be stared at to refrain from staring in turn.
(Here we interject: while it is well known that mirri and k’bal are not remotely bipedal or physiologically similar to humanity, it is equally well known that alwar—and tenju, whom we shall encounter later in this chronicle—share similar primary and secondary sexual characteristics with human physiology. This in turn has led to much speculation about species origin and where in their genetic pasts alwar, tenju, and humans diverged. Sexual and gender identities, of course, are not wedded by default to biology, but where it is known to the historical record what the subject’s gender identity is, we will employ the appropriate pronouns.)
And so.
The alw was the subject of everyone’s attention, except the overdressed man at the front. Grytt, for all her mecha-enhanced bulk, was not a tall woman, but this person came scarcely higher than her collarbone, and seemed frail as a weed. She wore practical spacer clothing: neat, close-fitting trousers, tunic, no broad swaths of exposed skin. She had black skin, truly black, like pitch or void, several shades darker than the charcoal dark of her hair, which was shaved at the sides and drawn up on top of her skull in a tail. Her eyes were an unsettling shade of garnet, and very large in her finely boned face. There were metal rings in her ears, several in each, confined to the upswept cartilage, leaving the scant lobes bare and unpierced.
A second alw stood beside the first. This one, though sharing the same relative dimensions, was much more fair-skinned, with the pinkish undertones found in some humans (Jaed Moss came to mind, and Thorsdottir). His hair was an inoffensive, medium brown, drawn back in a single, sensible braid that hung down his back like a pointing finger. His eyes flicked down the queue, lingering where Grytt knew the k’bal were standing, multiple head-stalks tilted in what might be curiosity or deepest disapproval. This alw, too, wore nondescript spacer clothes, but over them he sported a jacket which looked like fashionable affectation, and while it might have been (Grytt had no idea of alwar fashion), she did recognize the gleam of ballistic cloth in tesla-light, and how it was just a little bit stiffer than ordinary fabric.
Fashionable armor, then, which made this alw either soldier or security. He was apparently unarmed, because that was the law on Lanscot Station, but Grytt had little faith that diplomats (which these two must be) would be held to the same laws as everyone else.
Grytt cocked her remaining eyebrow at the alw woman. “How can I help you?” There were probably polite honorifics she should be using. But then, this alw had approached her, hadn’t she?
“You are Domina Grytt,” said the alw. “I am Adept Uo-Zanys Kesk.” She bowed from the neck without ever breaking eyelock. “I represent the Harek Empire, and I am here to collect you for transport.”
Bureaucrats, whatever their designation, rank, or political affiliation, shared a certainty of their own importance coupled with the conviction that if they deployed their credentials, circumstances would align in the manner they wished. That really only worked, in Grytt’s experience, if the bureaucrat had sufficient rank to compel obedience, which meant the audience had to be familiar with that ranking system. Grytt had no idea what an adept was.
“Huh,” she said, unmoving, and resisted an urge to fold her arms. The adept knew her name, which lent weight to her credibility, but Grytt was well past jumping whenever a minor functionary thought she should, particularly from a strange species, particularly when she was suggesting that Grytt would just go off and get on a ship with her.
The adept, this Uo-Zanys Kesk (Two names! What was she, royalty?), composed her face into a smile that looked a little too small and tight for comfort. “I understand that this greeting may seem abrupt, and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have, but it is urgent that you come with me.”
“Huh,” Grytt said again. This time she did fold her arms. She speared a look at the other alw, whose hands had drifted a little bit toward his hip, where—aha, yes, there was indeed some sort of sidearm, mostly concealed by the sweep of his jacket. But he was not looking at her, which was either insulting or—no. There was some other threat.
By now the entire queue, including the overdressed yammerer, had gotten quiet and very attentive. Grytt’s remaining flesh prickled.
“What’s standing behind me?” she asked the armed alw.
At that, several nearby persons waiting in the queue turned their heads, and one man’s hand flew to his mouth as if drawn by a magnet.
That sealed it: Grytt had to look, and so got her first glimpse of tenju.
There were four of them, all roughly Grytt’s height: not especially tall by human standards. But they were broader than she, which made them formidable indeed. Unlovely, too, by human metrics; Grytt was reminded of Lanscottar feral boars. These particular tenju wore sensibly, identically constructed close-fitting trousers and shirts, obviously a uniform of some kind. They were looking at the alwar and grinning with nothing like humor or friendliness, and with prominent tusks.
Grytt liked them immediately.
She turned back to the alwar. The armed alw bared his own far less impressive teeth, grin or grimace, or perhaps merely professional recognition.
“They are no one of consequence, Domina,” he said softly. His accent was light, lilting, vowel-heavy.
The adept with two names was feigning indifference with the same deliberate dignity as a cat might deploy when safely out of reach of a barking dog. “Please, Domina Grytt, if you’ll come with me—”
“She can ride with us,” said one of the tenju. His accent was more guttural than the alw’s, as if the words were trying to avoid the tusks as long as possible, and then rushing past. “Going the same place, aren’t we?”
That begged the obvious question, which Grytt was preparing to ask, when her mecha eye caught movement at the edge of the crowd that had gathered (all while pretending to have business near the ticketing office).
For a man so tall and lanky, Rupert never gave the impression of striding briskly. Grytt blamed his robes, which had been required on Thorne (some archaic costume to which tradition attached far too much importance), and which he persisted in wearing because of some misplaced sentiment despite the inconvenience of farmyards and sheep. He arrived, a little breathless, forehead beaded with sweat at the hairline, skin visibly flushed, which was no minor feat with his complexion.
“Grytt,” he announced, as if she did not already know her own name. Then, apparently noticing the tableau, he swung wide to approach from her right side (the next woman in the queue yielded ground without protest) and take her elbow as he leaned close and put his mouth next to her ear.
&n
bsp; “We need to leave now. With”—and here he glanced, finally, at the alwar—“with these people.” Grytt rocked back on her heels. Rupert, of all people, would not forget something as basic as people’s names. That must mean he did not know them. He also did not run in public. Confronted by two impossibilities at once, she erred on the side of second-guessing him.
“Does that mean we’ve got authorization? You’re . . . Vizier now, or whatever?”
His hand darted toward his pocket and hovered there, over what Grytt supposed was his handscroll with some official and officious message in barely comprehensible prose that he could take out and wave at the skeptical. A strange smile ghosted his lips. “Vizier, for the moment, until the Confederation parliament comes up with a better title.”
“And Dame Maggie’s sending us to Samtalet with—” She cast a glance at the adept. “Adept Uo-Zanys Kesk?”
Rupert inclined his head. His heavy robes whispered seditiously among themselves as he reached into their folds. “The Harek Empire has business in that sector, and has offered to courier us to the station. Do you want to see the orders?”
She nodded, slowly, and Rupert retrieved his handscroll, unrolled it, and made a great show of entering an elaborate access code. Then he snapped the scroll straight and flipped it to face her. The document, naming Rupert Vizier of the Confederation of Liberated Worlds, certainly looked authentic. Fancy script, impossible diction, Rupert’s name and title prominently associated with the official seal. There was even an amendment, directing him to proceed at once to Samtalet, to establish an embassy there.
She eyelocked Rupert over the rim of the scroll, on the precipice of apology, and saw the corner of his eye twitch. Not a wink, which would have astonished her greatly, but a tiny muscle-spasm that astonished her nearly as much. Rupert was a consummate diplomat, and a formidable card player, because his features were disciplined. She had no doubt that he’d arithmanced his aura into serenity, but that tiny muscle—that she could see only because of her mecha eye, and because she knew him very well—was a betrayal. Rupert was lying. The document was not genuine. And more alarming, Rupert was afraid.
Grytt could think of only one reason that Rupert would be in possession of a forged authorization, or casting himself and her on the transportational mercies of a xeno whose name he did not even know, and afraid at the same time.
Something must have happened to Rory.
She drilled him with a we’ll talk later look, rerolled the scroll, and handed it back to him.
“Right,” she said. “I’ll go get our bags, then.”
Asking what had happened, and what he knew, and what he’d done (corollary, how much trouble they’d be in later) would have to wait. They had a whole trip to Samtalet ahead of them.
CHAPTER FOUR
By the time Thorsdottir re-emerged from the cockpit, Jaed had finally gotten himself into his hardsuit and Rory was elbow-deep in the arms-locker. She thrust a ’slinger at Thorsdottir. “Ready?”
Thorsdottir took the weapon, checked charge and load, and clipped it to her chestplate. She pretended not to watch as Rory, and then Jaed, performed the same operation. “The damage to G. Stein’s hull. Do you know what did it?”
“What damage?” asked Jaed.
Rory sighed. She finished adjusting her helmet before answering. “As I told Zhang, I do not.”
Jaed’s voice rose and sharpened. “What damage?”
“Something that burns without phlogiston,” Thorsdottir said. “Something that chewed through the hull of that warship like, like . . .” She made a frustrated noise. “Like it was a cookie.”
Jaed’s eyes bounced between Thorsdottir and Rory. “What, like plasma?”
Rory had been smiling faintly at the comparison of warships to cookies. Now she sobered again. “We don’t know. If it’s a battle-hex—”
“If?” Jaed said. “What else would it be?”
—“then it’s one I haven’t seen before, though I don’t pretend I’m an expert in battle-hexes. But it’s pretty clearly not the Confederation’s doing.”
“Who else would be firing on Tadeshi royalist ships except the Confederation?”
“Well. That’s the question, isn’t it? We need to get aboard G. Stein. The turing might still have some salvageable memory. If there is someone shooting up royalist warships that isn’t us, then maybe we have a new potential ally.”
Thorsdottir sighed. She remembered what Grytt had said about the enemies of my enemies.
“Or a new enemy,” said Jaed, who evidently also remembered that lesson.
“Then we need to know that, too.” Rory sealed her helmet’s visor, which effectively ended the conversation.
Thorsdottir looked at Jaed, who jammed his helmet on with less grace and more force than Rory had. His eyes, pale and blue, blazed through the faceplate like stars.
Thorsdottir settled her own helmet over her skull with more care, visor already down. The seals engaged automatically. The HUD came online with an understated flicker. The suit-to-suit comms hissed to life, accompanied by a trio of green teslas, one for each suit in the link, and the larger, solid green bar that meant the suit was connected to Vagabond and—
“Zhang,” she said. “Copy?”
“Affirm,” said Zhang.
“Proceeding to aetherlock,” Thorsdottir said. She cycled the seals. Vagabond shivered underfoot. Then the red teslas over the hatch went grey and dim, and the green ones lit up. Everyone crowded into the aetherlock.
There came a hiss, and a puff of what looked like steam.
Thorsdottir’s hardsuit reported breathable atmosphere in G. Stein, and for a mad moment she was tempted to remove her helmet. Wearing it made her feel like there was something important happening just outside the range of her perception, despite 360 degrees of periphery segmented and displayed in tiny frames along the HUD’s border. One of those frames held Rory, shifting from one foot to the other in silent impatience.
Thorsdottir unclipped her ’slinger and put herself between Rory and G. Stein’s hatch. She knew, without looking, that Rory’s eyes would be rolling behind her faceplate. There were some habits of royal service that she couldn’t change. Any ’slinger cleared for void-use wouldn’t have sufficient force to breach the ship’s superstructure, but a desperate defender might toss a grenade through the gap, or risk ricochet and simply open fire, which would result in many bolts pinging around very small space. Better any stray bolts hit her.
The hatch irised open. Beyond it, G. Stein’s emergency lights studded the crease between deck and bulkhead like little beads of blood.
Or rubies, Thorsdottir told herself sternly. Everything red need not be likened to blood.
Her inner Grytt, the existence of whom would have appalled the actual Grytt, observed that liquids would freeze at sufficiently cold temperatures, and that blood was a liquid, and that ships with failing life support got very cold. Thorsdottir silenced that Grytt in terms she would not have dared use with the real one and stepped on G. Stein’s deck.
No one shot at her. No one threw a grenade. Thorsdottir’s HUD had not misinformed her. “G. Stein seems deserted. I don’t see anyone. The ship’s life support seems to be functioning, too,” Thorsdottir added, in case Rory or Jaed (mostly Jaed) had not noticed.
She led her procession of three up a very long passage to the first intersection. The section seals to the left—no, to the port—were irised tight. The starboard corridor, and the one proceeding straight ahead, remained pressurized and accessible.
Thorsdottir stopped. “Where are we trying to go?”
“The bridge,” said Rory. “That’s where the turing’s memory core will be.”
Thorsdottir looked at the bulkheads. There were no helpful signs to say where she was. There were only opaque alphanumerics, a code meant for the residents and no one else.
“An
d how do we get there?”
“I’ve been on a ship like this, I think,” Jaed said. “A tour when I was a kid, some official thing, everyone in fancy clothes. I got lost.”
“That is not helpful.”
Jaed’s voice took on a razorish quality. “We go up, Thorsdottir. Of course. The bridge is at the top of the ship. That I do know.”
Up. Thorsdottir panned her headlamp both ways. This ship—all ships, anymore, that traveled in void—had gravity-hexes. Up and down became a matter of design. G. Stein, from the outside, looked like a pair of slightly convex disks welded together on the edges. There was no up. There was only around.
“Jaed. Don’t make me ask.”
“The corridors coil clockwise to ascend,” he said.
“That means port,” said Rory. “Left. We’re going left.”
“Jaed and I will take point.” Thorsdottir hoped she sounded as fiercely obdurate as Grytt. “You’re behind us, Pr—Rory.” She paused, in case of argument.
“Mm,” said Rory, in the same way she might acknowledge the observation that her tea had gotten cold. She was staring at something only she could see, eyes focused somewhere vaguely up and over there. “I’m tracking that rogue transmission. It’s coming from this way.”
“Of course it is,” Thorsdottir muttered. “Come on, Jaed.”