A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

by Alex White

  She checked her pylon inventory. “Um, zero?”

  “Damn,” he replied. “We could’ve used a few of those on Mother’s ship.”

  “Captain Lamarr,” said Boots, her heart finally slowing to a human speed, “if you think I’m about to take some lip about saving the crew of your ship—”

  “Now, now. Let’s talk about that planet. If we don’t find somewhere to dock, we aren’t even limping home.”

  Her eyes ran over the debris of the battle cruiser, searching for any survivors, fighters, or pod launches. She found nothing. It disturbed her a little, having sliced through them so cleanly.

  “Any landmasses on that planet, Boss?” she called in. “Or is it just ocean?”

  Armin chimed in her ear. “This is Prince. According to old surveyor data, that color you’re seeing is caused by large deposits of cobalt in the planet’s soil. There’s no water anywhere on that world.”

  Boots maneuvered away from the Capricious with a few well-placed pulses. “Great. So potential heavy metal poisoning every time you cycle your suit. How hard would it be to colonize?”

  “Your reclaimers would have to be one hundred percent efficient. Waste of time. Miss Brio is working on a better survey, but we’re still having trouble getting planetary scans.”

  Boots throttled up, shooting past the Capricious as though leading him in for an approach.

  “So there’s nothing about the planet we can scan?” she asked.

  Armin replied, “We can do visual analytics, but that could take some time. And from this angle, we won’t get the other side of the planet, or anything in its umbral cone.”

  Something clicked inside Boots’s head, some memory she couldn’t quite dredge up.

  “Repeat your last, Prince.”

  “We can’t see the dark side of Chaparral Two or anything in the umbral cone—the shadow that the planet casts.”

  Jean said you would delve the umbra and destroy everything. Do it.

  Boots spun her ship to look at the star in the far distance. Her HUD corrected her and showed her two stars, their orbits intertwined in a binary system. “Is the planet tidally locked to those two stars?”

  Armin made a thoughtful noise. “The survey only shows one star, and the planet shouldn’t be locked to it. Our weak predictions based on visual data indicate otherwise. We are detecting a tidal lock.”

  “The Harrow is on the other side, in the planet’s umbra. Follow me, and I’ll guide you in.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The widow’s diary from Carré.”

  A pause, then Cordell’s voice came over the radio. “Boss here. It’s the best we’ve got. Lead on.”

  Under basic thrust, the journey to the umbra took two grueling hours. They made a wide arc around the planet, in case the Harrow had an automated firing solution. The glass on Boots’s ship lit up with a calculation of the light from the binary star system, drawing a long black spike into space where the shadow lay. Green light traced its edges like a coating of acid.

  That’s where she’d find the Harrow.

  “Prince to Boots,” said Armin. “I’m narrowing down the search a bit.”

  Her screen flashed, eliminating much of the umbra’s sharpness and shortening it considerably. “Interesting …”

  “The orbits of the binary stars cause some of these areas to be illuminated from time to time. We want to start with places that remain pitch-black—fully within the umbral shadow. I’m routing data to your Runner. He’ll let you know when you’re almost out of the star’s light.”

  “Understood. Boots out.”

  Another hour went by, and Boots’s system chirped. She held her breath as the Midnight Runner crossed into the shadow, the star’s light disappearing from her canopy. All interference disappeared from her sensors, and proximity alarms rang out as her long-range system detected a massive hulk.

  Her stomach dropped. “Contact! Bogey spades, camber zero-niner-zero, carom two-two-four, distance twelve thousand. Please advise.”

  Armin returned the call. “Visual?”

  “Negative, sir. Waiting for my sensors to get a better look at him.”

  “Solid copy. Take evasive action if necessary. Stand by for orders.”

  Boots eyed her console, waiting for any warnings, but none came. She glanced back to the Capricious, its bulk passing into the shadows behind her.

  “Boots, Boss here. Sensors just came back online. We see him.”

  A half dozen views of a spectacular warship spun into life on Boots’s cockpit glass. Her sensors picked up every detail from this range, analyzing them, passing them to her—over a kilometer long with a sleek black hull that melted into the shadows, the ship had a giant spell disc, twenty times larger than anything Boots had ever seen in person. Never had she felt such a strange comingling of exhilaration and dread.

  “It’s the Harrow,” said Cordell. “Well done, my friends. Well done, Boots.”

  She’d known, academically, that it was real from the moment she set foot in Jean Prejean’s lair, but hearing those words from her captain sucked the air from her lungs. She never thought she’d actually see another treasure again.

  Cordell knocked her out of the moment. “He’s not reacting to us, so I doubt anybody is home over there. Automatic defenses will be running full, though. Remember our ADF dreadnoughts? He’ll come alive if we take boarding action.”

  “Prince here. We just got back orienteering, along with the sensors,” said Armin. “This is very interesting. It would appear that the light of those binary stars is creating the suppression effect. The star itself is some kind of spell, or at least an arcane phenomenon.”

  “Incredible. So the magic suppression field has a hole in it, and that’s where they parked the ship.” Boots’s glass gave her a variety of galactic waypoints, including the nearest jump gate—two weeks away. With the Capricious’s limping engines, it could take a month.

  “Indeed,” said Armin. “Like hiding from a harsh storm in the lee of a building.”

  “We’ve got to get on board that ship, sir. Mother will be here any moment,” said Boots.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” said Cordell. “You think you can get close? Maybe dismantle some of his anti-air towers?” said Cordell.

  “Boss, I don’t have any countermeasures except basic dispersers. You know that’s not enough for something like this.”

  “Can you do without?” asked the captain, an edge in his voice.

  The fighter’s sensors registered a return, showing the Harrow’s thousand slingers bristling along its surface. The grainy image she’d seen of it jumping did the ship no justice. Taitutian craftsmanship mingled with strange ship design, giving the vessel the appearance of having rippling muscles under its metal skin.

  If she flew in there, she’d be space dust in seconds.

  “Negative, Boss. He’d have a firing solution on me before I even got close.”

  No response came, and she worried that the magical interference had done something to their comms. Or maybe he was mad at her.

  “Come in, Capricious.”

  “Stand by, Boots. Our mechanics think they have an idea.”

  “Copy that. Standing by.”

  Nilah huffed as she stacked chest after chest next to the cargo bay doors. It was hard work, made harder by the bulky spacesuit she had to wear. “You know, if I’d known we were going to use your new tools to simulate debris, I would’ve bought cheaper ones.”

  Orna gave her a sidelong glance through her visor. “And you can afford more. Besides,” she grunted, hefting a metal crate, “there’ll be better crap on board the Harrow.”

  “Assuming we make it.”

  “We’ll make it, but it’ll be dangerous. Maybe you can get another set of scars to show off.” Orna turned away, and Nilah couldn’t see her expression. Was she thinking of Ranger?

  “I’m not showing off.”

  “Why not? Scars are cute on you.”

 
It was a simple, stupid plan, but the best one Nilah and Orna could concoct: deactivate all magical items and leap across the twelve-kilometer gap to the Harrow while posing as a cloud of debris. The Harrow would automatically attack vehicles, so Nilah and Orna would have to make the jump in spacesuits.

  Klaxons signaled the venting of atmosphere. Nilah finished having second thoughts right about the time the cargo bay opened up and gave her third thoughts. The planet’s surface glimmered far below, phosphorescence from a network of poisonous, ever-burning fires. The black outline of the Harrow greeted her, a dark speck on the horizon.

  Kin chimed in Nilah’s comm. “I’m pleased to be accompanying you on this mission, Miss Brio. I think you’ll find my hacking abilities to be an excellent complement to your own.”

  “Uh, thanks, mate,” said Nilah. She didn’t like being in charge of Boots’s AI. It felt a bit like carrying around someone else’s diary.

  “I’m concerned the Taitutian infrastructure won’t have a socket for me,” said Kin. “My model was far more common on Clarkesfall.”

  “I can figure something out,” said Nilah. “Kin, how long will the Capricious take to pick us up if Cordell misses and we don’t hit the Harrow?”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. You’ll enter the planet’s gravity well and burn up in the atmosphere long before the Capricious can catch up to you.”

  “Well that’s cheery.”

  “A painless death is more than most humans can hope to get,” said Kin.

  “Okay, Kin. Thank you for that, uh, perspective. We need you to shut down now. I don’t want your energy signature triggering the Harrow’s guns.”

  Orna checked her atmospheric gauges, her voice crackling over Nilah’s old comm. “We’ll wake you up when we get there, Kin.” She gestured Nilah to the pallet of tool chests and braced to push against it. “Can you think of anything else we need to do before we go?”

  “Another kiss might be nice if we didn’t have these damned helmets on.”

  “What was that?” Cordell chuckled over the comm.

  Orna shot Nilah a murderous glare through the visor. “Nothing, Boss. Hunter One and Two, standing by for orders.”

  Those were the code names they’d been given. A few months ago, basking in the luxury of a PGRF hospitality suite, Nilah would’ve thought a code name was cool. Now, it just meant she was doing something stupid. Worse still, she was Hunter Two, and she had a pathological hatred of being second.

  “Hunter One and Two, execute in three …”

  Nilah activated her mag boots and braced against the deck.

  “Two …”

  She wrapped her fingers around the pallet’s dolly handle, and Orna did the same.

  “One …”

  Nilah raised her eyes to the Harrow, a shadow in the sea of distant fires.

  “Execute.”

  The pair of women shoved as hard as they could. The pallet barely budged at first, but gradually picked up speed. Once they built up enough momentum, they sailed out of the cargo bay and into open space.

  “Boss, this is Hunter One. We’re floating here. Deactivating oxy scrubbers now.”

  Nilah followed Orna’s lead, shutting down her suit’s atmospheric processors. Any energy signatures were dangerous, including the descender discs they’d have to use to land.

  “All right, ladies,” said Cordell. “I’m about to give you the shove, and it’s comms out until you hit home. Hold on to your helmets, and god speed you.”

  “Hunter One, acknowledged.”

  “Uh, Hunter Two, acknowledged.”

  A blue wall of force coalesced behind the pair of spacewalkers, and Nilah’s eyes met Orna’s. Both women reached up, and in tandem, shut down their communicators. The Capricious’s shield gently came to rest against them, matching speed with their slow drift. Nilah could imagine Cordell on the bridge, funneling his magic into the amp, his eyes fixed to the heads-up display.

  Boots circled nearby in the Runner, waiting to see them off. She illuminated them with the fighter’s searchlight, flashing them three times. Orna waved back.

  The shield pulsed once with light before pressing against them and hurling Nilah, Orna, and the tools into the blackness. She was impressed at the crushing force of their acceleration—far stronger than that of the Lang Hyper 8. Her limbs were glued to Cordell’s shield. Blood rushed to her head and legs. Then she came free, and her flight had truly begun.

  Nilah strained to get her breathing under control; she wouldn’t have much air if she panicked. At first, it didn’t feel as though they were moving very fast, but then Nilah looked back to see the Capricious as a tiny, bright speck.

  Minutes stretched on for an eternity. Orna placed her hand over Nilah’s as they hurtled through open space. The Harrow grew in their vision, and with each closing kilometer, he seemed to double in size. Red running lights burned ominously, like the thousand eyes of a wicked creature.

  Halfway through their flight, Orna reached out and grabbed one of the tool chests, gently opening it and shuffling its contents out into the vacuum. They had to create a believable debris field to hamper the sensors from seeing live targets in the middle. Nilah followed suit, never shoving or throwing anything too hard for fear of disrupting her own vector. As long as she kept things pretty equal, she’d stay on course. Her life depended on her slamming straight into the hull at full speed. Soon they inhabited a slowly expanding cloud of metal, rubber, plastic, regraded steel, and fibron. She could only hope the Harrow’s sensors would detect them as a shipwreck.

  Orna withdrew her descender canister and held on tightly to its girth. Nilah fumbled with her own canister, checking the battery to make certain the radar was disabled. She suppressed her urge to psychically connect to its guts, just in case the automatic defenses could detect a mechanist’s magic. Orna nodded at her as they watched the hulking spacecraft draw nearer.

  Guns on the ship’s surface anxiously followed their progress, but they didn’t open fire.

  The utter silence of her suit, no atmospheric cycling, unnerved her. Maybe she was only imagining it, but her head felt light. The inside of her visor condensed her breath like the rainforests on her homeworld, and sweat coated her arms. She wondered if incursions like this were the reason the suit had such a unique scent in the first place.

  Orna held her descender in front of her as they flew headfirst toward the hull, and Nilah followed suit. Activate too soon, and they’d both be blasted to pieces by the automated defenses seeing an energy signature. Too late, they’d slam into the hull at full speed with no protection. Nilah had no idea how fast they were moving, but it had to be over a hundred kilometers an hour.

  They passed through an antenna array, past the con tower and the darkened bridge. Hard armor plates raced toward them, and Nilah thanked her lucky stars that she was an expert at judging distance at high speed. She pulled Orna close to her, just in case the quartermaster wasn’t as skilled. Their descender cushions would overlap in the collision, and in a worst-case scenario, Nilah’s cushion could catch both of them. She primed herself to flow magic into the canister.

  Nilah activated her descender a good twenty meters above the hull, and all guns simultaneously swung toward her. She tried to watch their barrels for the telltale signs of her doom, but tumbled as green phantoplasm enveloped the pair of them. A high-speed collision was never pleasant, but phantoplasm made it survivable. Her limbs tangled with Orna’s, and magical ooze jerked them every which way. Orna’s descender popped as well, tousling the two women harder as the disparate gelatinous cushions pushed through one another.

  They came to rest, and the phantoplasm began to vaporize. Nilah switched on her mag boots before anything else, clamping her heels to the hull and rising to her feet. Orna had landed at an awkward angle, her feet pointing straight up in the air. As the quartermaster struggled to orient herself, she bucked away from the hull, out of arm’s reach of any handholds. Nilah snatched her from the air like a waywar
d child, spun her, and slammed her heels onto the metal. Orna’s mag boots suctioned to the surface, and they both activated their comms.

  “Capricious, this is Hunter One,” Orna huffed. “Package delivered. We’re intact.”

  “Yeah. Hunter Two. Same,” Nilah breathed, switching on her scrubber. Cool air rolled over her body, and the fog instantly cleared from her vision.

  “Good to hear,” said Cordell.

  “Prince here. We’re sending you a waypoint,” Armin added. “It’s the nearest airlock. Can you confirm visual?”

  Nilah glanced around, finding a human-sized circular indention in the hull a few meters away, marked in red on her HUD. “Hunter Two, I see the airlock.”

  “Great,” said Armin. “Proceed to the airlock and … stand by. We’re picking up something on the scanner.”

  Nilah gulped fresh air as they conferred on board the Capricious.

  “We’re picking up countermeasures skimming along the surface of the Harrow!” Armin’s voice returned, nearly panicked. “Take evasive action, now!”

  But to where? They couldn’t leap from the ship, or the automatic slingers would shred them. If the countermeasure spells were skimming along the surface, taking cover wouldn’t help. Rather than listening to Armin, both women knelt down, traced glyphs, and placed their palms against the intelligent skin of the ship.

  The fingers of their gloves held specialized contacts, allowing their magic to flow into machines. Together, they dove into the complex circuitry of the ship’s outer skin, quickly locating the nodes that detected the presence of boarders. Cybersecurity on the ship’s hull was light, and Nilah quickly pulled apart the protections and locks surrounding the node, while Orna penetrated the core logic.

  The spells coming for them couldn’t be shut down—not once they’d been launched. However, the spells took their direction from the ship’s skin, and that could be fooled. The pair of women managed to access the ship’s detectors just in time to see a huge flash of fire explode just a few meters from their position.

  “Nice work, Orn—I mean, Hunter One!” Nilah said. “Let’s hit that airlock.”