A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

by Alex White

  “Distance to Alpha, nine hundred meters,” said Armin. “By now, they know we took down their illusion spell, sir.”

  “Zoom in on the hull,” said Cordell, and Nilah complied, focusing her many lenses on its massive hull. “Oh, that’s the big boy right there. He’s got four engines.”

  Nilah bit her lip. There were no contingencies if this failed. “He still hasn’t seen us, Captain.”

  “Seven hundred meters to Alpha,” called Armin.

  “Not yet,” Cordell soothed. “Let the bastards get a little closer.”

  “Five hundred meters,” called Armin as the ship sunk lower, closer to Nilah’s cameras.

  “Closer …”

  The hot spotlight of Mother’s battle cruiser fell on Nilah’s lens. “It sees me, Captain!”

  Cordell stood from his chair. “Now!”

  At Orna’s command, the charges detonated at the top of the trench, sending glacial chunks of ice drifting overhead. They tumbled slowly, until a set of secondary charges splintered them down toward Mother’s battle cruiser in a scattershot pattern.

  “Hold, Brio!” called Cordell.

  For this plan to work, they needed Mother to cast her spell, to be unprepared for the coming assault. Nilah swallowed, hoping the ice was good enough bait. The blues and blood reds of the canyon smeared away in a gray flash, and a volley of slinger fire appeared, shattering the dozen glaciers into a blast of snow.

  Mother had done exactly what Cordell said she would: she pulled her battle cruiser out of time to set up a counterattack.

  “Go!” ordered the captain, and Nilah’s drone collective sprang into life. The dozen satellite orbs erupted from the scanner-jamming ice crystals, casting the grenadier’s mark as fast as they could. Nilah built the ball of plasma in the drones’ care like she was rolling it around in her palm before chucking it straight into the engine of Mother’s battle cruiser.

  It was a good hit, melting the central mounting of one of the engines. The blue jet of flame sputtered and died as Mother’s ship listed to one side. Another gray flash filled the cameras, and the ship reappeared elsewhere inside the ice storm. Nilah’s reflexes kicked in, and she re-targeted the engines without a second’s pause. “No you don’t!” she cried, sending another ball of luminous energy straight into the nozzle of another engine.

  The scanners snapped to Nilah’s drone collective, and she winced. She had more damage to do.

  “They’re targeting us,” said Orna. “Prepare to evade!”

  Mother’s spell pulled her ship out of time once more and the colors melted away. When they returned, sizzling slinger bolts came flying straight at each one of Nilah’s drones, taking out two of them. The ship had moved once again, but it couldn’t flee through the ice overhead. Nilah would get another shot.

  “Take her out!” shouted Cordell. “Let’s end this!”

  This time, Nilah felt no hesitation, no fear at the thought of ending another person’s life. She fired another grenadier’s mark and slammed the battle cruiser’s third engine, shattering its housing into thousands of pieces. Mother’s ship belched smoke into the crowded canyon, the airlessness drawing it away like syrup down into the trench. She wanted revenge for Didier, for Malik. She lined up a shot, charging closer. She would put a ball of plasma straight through the bridge.

  Another gray flash, and Nilah completely lost contact with her drones. She knew what had happened. They’d been shot to pieces because of her charge.

  “I lost contact, Captain Lamarr,” said Nilah. “Sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Miss Brio. They’re going to limp to the docks with hits like those,” he replied. “Missus Jan, take us out of here. We’ve got a jump gate to catch.”

  Boots wrung her fingers behind her back, not wanting her nerves to show. Combat strategy briefings never sat well with her—ground truth always ruined plans.

  There’d been a day of planning en route to the jump gate, and Armin had spent it sequestered away in his quarters, crunching data. Once they’d jumped, Cordell called a meeting. The crew stood assembled in the mess—not on alternating shifts, not away at work stations. With all of them together, the holes where Didier and Malik once stood filled with a tangible nothingness. No one mentioned the gaps.

  Cordell rubbed his palms together, as though about to pick up a heavy load. “Mister Vandevere, why don’t we start with the bad news?”

  Armin placed his palm onto the ship’s data terminal, and the projectors wove together images of Mother’s smoking battle cruiser. “I’ve been analyzing the combat footage of our previous encounter with Mother, and I believe we were less effective than we thought.”

  Boots knew what he was going to say before he said it. The countermeasures on advanced warships were so much stronger than most conventional weapons. They’d been lucky to score hits at all, and it’d always been a gamble.

  “You can see their dispersers firing effectively here and here,” said Armin, and the projections highlighted his designations. “Some of the damage is more superficial than it looks. Based upon their crew complement, ship class, available resources, and a few other variables, I estimate their repairs to have taken under forty-eight hours. They’re already chasing us, and I can guarantee they’re going to catch up.”

  Boots glanced at Nilah, who turned ashen.

  “Miss Brio,” said Cordell, “you did a fine job hammering those engines. This is just the hand we were dealt, and we’ve got to play it.”

  Armin cleared his throat. “For obvious reasons, I’ve been spending the bulk of my bandwidth finding the Harrow’s last known coordinates. Now that we have those, I was able to turn my attention to Mother’s spell. She’s the vanguard of the enemy, and it’s time we created a countermeasure.”

  A projection of a golden glyph filled the mess. The lights dimmed, leaving the crew in the dark with the sigil, glowing like the sun. Its form was intricate, yet severe, the mingling of genius and fury. Even Boots could tell this was no ordinary glyph.

  “This,” said Armin, “is Mother’s spell. It was scanned from beginning to end by Miss Elsworth, one of several perfect captures she made.”

  Murmurs rolled through the mess, and the glyph’s script took on a more twisted character in Boots’s mind. It was the mark of a hateful witch.

  “Through continuous analysis, and with Miss Sokol’s support, we’ve been able to determine how it works,” said Armin. “And it’s not pretty. We should start with the fact that—no matter how horrid—this woman is a virtuoso. The amount of arcane throughput she’d have to muster to cast this spell is enormous, and the complexity of the glyph is far too much for most of us scribblers. I doubt many people in the entire galaxy have faced something like her. I hate her as much as the rest of you, but we must respect her perfection if we’re going to deal with the threat.”

  The glyph moved aside to make room for a series of charts and graphs depicting arcane energy force curves plotted over nanoseconds. “Mother is capable of drawing targets of various sizes into temporary dimensions for short periods. Within those pocket dimensions, time passes at extreme rates, while on the home plane, no time appears to pass at all. That’s why it so often seems like she teleports—she’s just moving through the pocket dimension at ultrahigh speed. Nilah, you reported the colors leached from your surroundings, and I believe this is the clearest way to understand the phenomenon. All the things in color cohabitate the dimension that Mother creates with her spell. All the things in gray have been left back on your home plane, where time is slower. A colorless closed door cannot be opened, a gray gun cannot be lifted.”

  “So how does that help Mother?” asked Orna.

  “I believe she behaves like any predator,” said Armin. “She isolates you from the herd. If she can catch you without your slinger, you’re dead.”

  “But I had my slinger, and it didn’t ice her. Also, Mother’s scribbling didn’t work on me,” said Boots.

  “I believe that has something to do w
ith your arcana dystocia,” Armin replied. “Unfortunately, the medical establishment doesn’t understand much about your condition. If we did, we could find a way to use it to protect ourselves.”

  Boots had never considered herself useful in that way, and it made her uncomfortable. She crossed her arms and adjusted her stance, trying not to think about it too much.

  “We know we can defeat Mother’s spell from the inside if we flood it with a substantial amount of power, like the Arclight Booster or the ship’s core, causing a random teleportation. But if you’re not on the ship, that doesn’t help you. Dispersers won’t cut it if Mother doesn’t bring them into the pocket dimension.”

  Nilah spoke up. “Because things are happening too fast inside Mother’s spell?”

  “Precisely,” said Armin. “And dispersers take up a lot of energy, or we’d give them to all of you. Miss Sokol is working on a system, but we’re not confident that—”

  “Indolence gas,” Nilah interrupted. “We use it in racing.”

  Armin blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  “Did any of you catch last year’s Awala GP? The one where Vangen crashed out and fractured his arcane batteries.”

  Boots and the others stared blankly at her.

  “None of you watch racing?”

  A chorus of murmurs and “not really my thing” came in reply.

  Nilah rubbed her brow. “Okay, well … whenever we crash, there’s a chance that the mechanist components in the car will explode in unpredictable ways. You get gusts of wind, balls of flame, and so on. Indolence gas renders those high-speed spells inert, but it also disconnects you from magic for a short period of time.”

  Orna nodded. “They should use that in jails, instead of the dispersers.”

  Nilah shook her head. “Prolonged, constant exposure can cause permanent dull … arcana dystocia. It’d be like cutting off your legs to keep you from running away. It’s too cruel … and, uh, sorry for the slipup, Boots.”

  Boots shrugged, stifling her reflexive annoyance. “It’s fine. I know you’re trying.”

  The crew shifted uncomfortably, and Nilah cleared her throat. “With Orna’s help, we could manufacture indolence gas and eat up Mother’s spell from inside the pocket dimension, instead of pumping the spell full of power. We could rig a device to release the gas when we’re targeted by that specific glyph.”

  “If it does what you say, I’m not wearing that,” said Aisha.

  “No magic is better than dead,” Boots replied. “I get along just fine, you know.”

  “It’s perfectly safe in small doses,” Nilah replied. “And if you can catch Mother in the cloud, you might short out some of that armor she’s wearing as well.”

  “And it won’t be a choice, Missus Jan,” said Cordell, who then cocked an eyebrow at Boots. “What if Mother gets the whole ship again? I’m sure you all remember that one.”

  “That’s easy,” said Orna. “We program the ship to dump energy when it detects Mother’s spell. We’ll teleport from the disruption, but there are worse things.”

  The captain crossed his arms. “Can these countermeasures be ready in time to contact the Harrow?”

  “That depends, sir,” said Orna. “You haven’t told us when we’re arriving there.”

  Armin sucked in a breath. “Two days.”

  The crackle of anxiety that descended over the room was palpable.

  “What?” Orna’s eyes widened. “Why can’t we have more time to prepare? A week, at least!”

  Cordell straightened. “I’m sorry, Miss Sokol, but that’s not possible. Whoever is after us bought off the Fixers and Duke Thiollier’s royal guard, two of the most trusted organizations in the galaxy. We have to assume that they have infinite resources at their disposal, and that they’ll catch up to us sooner or later … probably sooner.”

  “You’re asking for a miracle, Captain!” said Orna.

  “That’s enough.” Cordell’s voice flattened the room like a hammer. “We’ve got a man dead. We’ve got another in a coma, and he is depending on us to be the miracle workers we’ve always been. Now there is only one correct answer here. They don’t want us finding the Harrow, so we’ve got to get there as soon as possible. If they’re trying this hard to kill us, that means they’re afraid of us, and by god, I will make sure they should be. Now, I don’t know what’s on that ship, but I know we want it. Miss Sokol, will you or won’t you be ready with the countermeasures in two days?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” said Cordell. “Is there anything else we need to cover?”

  “Missus Jan will take the floor.” Armin nodded to Aisha. “You found something on the star charts, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  The pilot waved her hand over the console, and a star map filled the mess. She pointed to one of the galaxies, and it unfolded before them. A yellow, blinking cloud ensconced a large portion of it, a red exclamation mark spinning in the center of the mass.

  “This is why they haven’t moved the Harrow in all these years: they found the perfect hiding place.” Aisha gestured to a warning box that popped up next to the cloud. “There’s a system-wide advisory that covers two hundred planetary bodies, including our destination. It’s category five, which makes it a no-fly zone.”

  “What’s the enforcing authority?” asked Boots. “Local navy?”

  Aisha shook her head. “There isn’t one. Category five means that if you enter, you die. Supposedly, the military won’t guard it because it’s self-policing. I checked all the records I could find. They said, ‘intense arcane storms and disruption.’”

  “That could mean anything,” Cordell added. “Do we have any imaging of the area?”

  Aisha gestured, and the cloud zoomed in on a blurry group of worlds. “Taitutian wide-band scrying and far field spellscopes took images thirty years ago. There are two worlds of reasonable size in all this mess. The Harrow supposedly jumped in next to this one: Chaparral Two.”

  One of the planets burned a bright green as Aisha reached out and touched it.

  “We’re not one hundred percent that the Harrow is still there. There’s a chance it could’ve jumped away on its own,” said Armin, “and the nearest jump gate is six days away at a full burn. If we go in, we’re there for at least a week.”

  “It’ll be there, sir. I can guarantee it,” said Boots. “Think about it—they tried to burn down my office, they tried to whack Nilah with a battlegroup of starfighters, and later, they burned down the duke’s palace. If they could move the ship, they would’ve, because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than killing Duke Thiollier.”

  Armin nodded. “I’m inclined to agree with your logic.”

  Cordell smiled. “So what do you think, Boots? What are we going to find when we jump in there?”

  Boots scratched the back of her head. “The past two sites we’ve found have been full of deadly traps, so … yeah … that. We don’t know the whereabouts of the other battle cruiser, either, so I’m pretty certain it’ll be waiting for us. I’m assuming we have a plan to engage them?”

  The captain let out a long sigh, breaking the regal composure he’d had only moments prior. “We’ll need to use the one advantage a marauder-class ship has—the belly. If we can get in close with them and mix it up, we might be able to get a lucky shot on their bridge. I’m thinking we rush them with full shields, some improvised mines, and the keel gun while you keep their fighters off our backs. Bombs overload the dispersers while Missus Jan lines up the perfect shot.”

  An eerie silence fell over the mess, only punctuated by the occasional beep of a computer. Boots’s hairs stood on end—he wanted to try the same strategy he’d used at Laconte.

  Cordell affixed Boots with his clear brown eyes. They were the only two people in the room who really understood what he was suggesting. He jammed his hands into his pockets. “You saw their missile complement, Bootsie. If we keep our distance, we’re dead. If you try to engage them one at a time, you�
�re dead, then we’re dead. Our only hope is to drop in fast and take them out before they know what hit them.”

  Boots lowered her gaze to stop herself from looking at her crewmates. Otherwise, she’d imagine them in the same states as those from Laconte: torn to pieces. That battle was Cordell’s greatest career failure. He wouldn’t suggest it unless he was sure.

  “So we drop out of the Flow, I launch, we charge, and hope for the best?” asked Boots.

  “Correct,” said Cordell.

  She might be able to talk him out of this. She could see in his eyes that he wasn’t completely sure of the strategy, either. And yet, as she racked her brain, she didn’t have any better ideas.

  “Has a marauder … ever in history …” said Boots, pinching the bridge of her nose, “taken out a battle cruiser.”

  Cordell smirked. “You’re the historian. You tell me.”

  Boots closed her eyes and nodded. “What the hell, I suppose. Maybe we can take a few of them with us.”

  “You know we will,” said the captain. “Missus Jan, keep us up to date regarding our exit from the Flow. Nonessentials are dismissed.”

  Boots awoke to the lights in her room flashing red.

  “All crew, ready stations in ten minutes. All crew, stand by ready stations,” came Aisha’s voice.

  Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, Boots gave herself a good stretch. They were coming out of the Flow right on schedule, and she’d been expecting the call any second, though she’d hoped they would be an hour late. The crew had been on standby for the past three days, which meant no showers and no disrobing, save for the few seconds it took to change clothes every day. The one exception to the rule was Nilah, who was classified as nonessential personnel. By the third day, being around the racer was like being in the presence of a divine creature—beautiful, polished, and pleasant—unlike the rest of the musky crew.

  Boots stank, and her hair felt greasy. She flexed her toes in her sweaty shoes. “Kin, how long was I out?”

  “Twenty-three minutes, Lizzie.”

  “Dang.” She lumbered out of bed and pulled her covers back into place before heading out to the cargo bay.