Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star

by Gregory Faccone

  "I am sorry," Barrister said, "without the same level of overcharge, I cannot make these shots as effective."

  The old man recovered enough under the nurse's ministrations to sit up with alert eyes as the second ship's magazines exhausted.

  "Quickly, Barrister! Prediction," Aristahl snapped.

  For a couple of seconds active surfaces and the tactical display filled with intense calculations.

  The mystic AI's voice quavered uncharacteristically. "Difficult."

  The calculations resolved into four estimated coursesfor Jordahk's team. Within seconds, all the projections fell short. Apparently, the team had about a minute left.

  "Forgive me, sir," the AI said with surprising feeling.

  Aristahl sat ramrod straight in his chair, making it more like a throne. He turned briefly and gave the commissioner a knowing grin, then studied the asteroids shown on the active wall and stretched out his hand.

  Feliz felt a strange tingle pass through his body. His ears strained to hear something just below their range. His body was trying to tell him something, but his mind couldn't interpret what. He was struck with a base instinct to run.

  "Not again," Torious droned, "there's only so much even I can do." He lowered into a more stable position.

  The old man seemed not to hear. His eyes were fixed as though gazing far away, then closed.

  "Do your job, nurse!" Barrister said.

  Torious produced a multi-strand device centered upon a ceramic box. The broad numenium band encircling it glimmered in normalizing bridge light.

  "Don't bully me, platinum brain," Torious said.

  The bot moved quickly despite its words. A score of glowing strands from the device touched the old man's head. Aristahl squinted sporadically with strain, his skin flushing red. After a moment, all color left at once.

  Feliz was certain the man who gave him a second chance was about to die.

  The universe warped around Jordahk, a moment of chaos in which his mind envisioned something far away. He was in open space with Cranium and Glick. He radiated like the sun. Glick surfed the radiation, catching fire, but not consumed. Cranium was covered in red light. Jordahk squeezed his eyes shut.

  Visions and dreams? He was getting like his mother.

  Now wasn't the time for strangeness. The three of them, past the irritability stage, were quite near resignation. The realization they weren't going to make it was easy to believe, but hard to swallow. They had figured a way past every obstacle. They had beaten the odds so often that when the dice went against them, it was doubly dismaying.

  At Cranium's virtual cockpit inside the reinforced engine chamber, Jordahk and Max piloted the unwieldy craft. It wasn't the kind of job for Wixom's dry, calculating power, even if he deigned to participate. No, this was more like a thresh. Jordahk and Max looped and twisted using their bare bones, makeshift thrust ring like they were fighting probes and dodging static torpedoes. It was half instinct, and Jordahk's was surprisingly prescient.

  Overall, their efforts were 90 percent successful, which was about 40 percent more than anyone else could have done. Sadly, it was also 10 percent short of what was required.

  "Come on!" Jordahk tried to urge the failing thrust ring. "Positively mega-snail."

  "One whose shell is cracking," Max said.

  "Please, guys," Cranium said. With less and less for the data rider to do, his color drained. It was obvious even through helmet crystal. "We're the soft guts inside."

  Jordahk opted for a cartwheel maneuver, and Max initiated it. The hull tumbled end over end, and a shot passed just by them. A couple of seconds later, another caught them directly. Though no air carried the sound, their makeshift cockpit was affixed to the bulkhead. A pounding vibration reverberated through them.

  "I'm surprised this thing has held up," Glick said. She looked around in detached wonder. "We've taken a lot of hits."

  Jordahk broke away from his concentration to meet her eyes. "You want to try piloting?"

  "No thanks, ace." Her smile was dry and a little sad. "I'm satisfied beating you on the mats. You can shine as a space jockey."

  Jordahk understood and made an expansive gesture. "It's a good trick. Who would try to navigate these fields without shields?"

  "Yeah, who?" Cranium remarked.

  A series of smaller vibrations tingled. A few surviving eyes positioned on the hull showed the surrounding area blasted with cover fire. The resulting debris raining down on their hull was surprisingly comforting.

  When the cover fire stopped abruptly, they regarded their chamber with foreboding. On the VADs new threats closed uninhibited.

  "Ah, that isn't good," the data rider said.

  Efforts to maneuver the increasingly sluggish bulk forward were failing. Jordahk felt he had more power somehow, yet he could see no way to direct it. It was almost as if he could touch the threat, yet it remained just out of his mental reach. That part of his mind grew increasingly frustrated.

  They leveled the hull out from another cartwheel and put it into a corkscrew. Within the grav weaved suits their stomachs were safe, but the rotating display was making Jordahk nauseous. Why did that weakness grow back within him? It was irritating. He needed another treatment from his grandfather, but he would have to live through the next few minutes first.

  Two impacts in close succession emphasized that point. Jordahk could have sworn he saw the bulkhead move.

  "You're not seeing things," Max said. "It moved."

  "We're pretty far from the outer hull," Jordahk said.

  "I don't think there's much outer hull left," Cranium replied. Then another impact seized his attention.

  It struck the thrust ring directly, which had enough plasma to carry the shot's special properties. Within the ring an oscillation swelled. It grew in frequency, traveling the circumference through the plasma. Jordahk was no physicist, but he didn't think such a thing possible, at least not in that manner. He had little time to ponder. The resonating grew violent. Seconds after impact, three-quarters of the thrust ring blew out with great force.

  The ship tumbled out of control. Cranium barked orders to bots, trying desperately to keep the last couple of nozzles on the thrust ring operational. Collision was just a matter of time without course corrections. Another shot impacted the rear, jarring the engine off its makeshift mount. The nuclear rocket blasted off-kilter in its housing. Errant plasma spilled back into their chamber.

  Glick jetted off like a shot. "Throttle down before you fry us!"

  Re-seating the engine would take too much time, so she ordered bots to cut away hull sections blocking their only means of forward propulsion. Fission welding was doing the job, but too slowly. Jordahk didn't need Max's trajectory predictions to realize an impact was coming.

  "We need that thrust now," he said.

  "Like ultra-now!" Cranium added.

  Glick grabbed their demolition charges. So carefully used to clear the chamber, now about to be used rather un-carefully. She tossed a couple to bots, affixing charges on the offending hull section where they could. One bot went farther out into the thrust spill to complete the detonation pattern. No satisfactory way to quickly affix the directional charge out there presented itself, so she ordered number 11 to hold it in position.

  The rest of them pulled back to the control area. Number 11 gripped the edge of the hull as space rotated behind it.

  "Sorry, eleven," Glick said.

  All three charges detonated in simultaneous flares. They closed their eyes by instinct even as helmet panes darkened automatically. A slab of hull tumbled free.

  "Hit it," Jordahk yelled.

  The engine blasted out the newly expanded exhaust port. Max laid out frantic courses, utilizing the skewed propulsion and two remaining thrust ring nozzles. Jordahk edged them toward their goal. He did it not because he thought they could definitely make it; rather, to keep them alive another minute—another minute's worth of options, and a chance for miracles. Maybe, hopefully, h
is grandfather would think of something.

  A series of ungraceful maneuvers heaved them back on course. They could barely maintain it in a lazy corkscrew, much less perform dodges. They picked up more threats. A set of three, and two more after that, not that the extra pair would be necessary. Cranium's face adopted a blank expression. The data rider was out of wisecracks, much less ideas. It was a sight from which Jordahk had to turn.

  He met Glick's eyes. She jetted close and grabbed his shoulder.

  Smiling, she said, "You know what they say about space."

  As the threats closed to the point from which they usually fired, Jordahk felt a buzz in his brain, a mental wave washing through him. A second wave was more intense. The buzz turned to pain. Jordahk pressed both hands to his helmet, back arching. He turned about, wild-eyed. "Something's going on out there. It's like a war in my head!"

  Glick was alarmed and helpless. If their end was to come, she wanted them to be together, and she wanted it to be quick. She held Jordahk as he convulsed under unseen mental buffeting.

  Two distinct sensations warred, one intense pressure, the other outright pain. It was right next to him and simultaneously in the space all around. Jordahk saw flares of white and knew they represented the attacking asteroids. The function of each was now paralyzed. They continued on ballistic courses unable to destroy themselves in the explosion that would launch their single projectile.

  Two sides were grappling for control. The asteroids were forced into inert status, radiating to a greater extent when the more familiar pressure wave was preeminent. But its rival in some way had home field advantage. That side's alternating pain spikes made it difficult to concentrate. Wixom came to the surface.

  The AI peered into Jordahk's brain through the myriad of amino fibrils the mystic link had sinuated over the years. When Jordahk wasn't feeling the pressure or pain of the great battle, it felt like every one of those fibrillae were tingling.

  "New course." It was Wixom's voice in all their helmets, calm and impassive. "Best speed on this vector."

  The information flashed before Cranium. He put the hull onto it as fast as their broken propulsion system would allow. He was like a man lunging for a rope as the sea pulled him under.

  "Hurry!" Jordahk said. He could feel an urgency that he didn't understand.

  The surging pain and pressure waves didn't subside, but he was adjusting. In his mind's eye, the light holding the threats immobile was dimming. Slowly, they were resuming their deadly courses. First those farthest away, but soon even the closest were shedding their binding light.

  "We've got to get to the transmission threshold quickly," Jordahk said as his eyes focused on some faraway place.

  "Clutch!" Glick yelled to her brother.

  "I'm trying! We're almost there."

  "Max, a comm VAD, Pops's parameters," Jordahk strained.

  "Wixom already set it up."

  In a few heart-pounding seconds, they burst through the layer's transmission-dampening web. The attacking asteroids continued their approach anyway, the argent light that had bound them almost completely gone.

  "Now!" Cranium yelled.

  A purple-bordered VAD appeared before Jordahk. He sensed it was a complex transmission with rotating frequencies and codes. The pain and pressure waves turned mostly to pain. He stood up to it enough to focus on the drawn face of a man with platinum irises.

  "Avere, Ek-Hein Wahb." Jordahk tried to say the sojourner syllabic metering with as much regal inflection as he could muster. "You have performed your thankless task long and well. Now it is time for you to come home." He recited the words given by his grandfather.

  Above dark circles, Ek-Hein's eyes focused for the first time. He sat up straight. "Thule-Riss?" He looked off screen, checking and rechecking things. He shook his head and blinked. "Thule-Riss Quext, I've done what you asked..."

  The person for whom Jordahk was being mistaken took him aback, but for the sake of their lives, he kept on script. The pain was vanishing, and relief flooded in.

  "Your stewardship is complete. I would meet you now."

  Next to the scant remains of what was once a tug, the Velia hung in space long enough to pick up passengers, then continued deeper into the murky field. The complex churning maelstrom was a challenge at the best of times. At least now it no longer targeted interlopers and could be entered shields hot. Carefully the Velia arrived at the center of an eddy. A man-made islet was surrounded by thick obscuring dust. The assorted remains of unlucky vessels were lashed to a strange old ship.

  Some Sojourners' Crusade era ships were still active in various starmadas, but they were updated with the latest coatings and externals. They blended in. The small escort ship at the center of this cobbled together base would not. It was a museum piece before restoration.

  Long disused lights came on, shining dimly through layers of caked dust. The Velia's launch docked without additional communication since Jordahk's sign off. Four passengers passed through the docking seal and followed a dim VAD line toward the cargo hold. Some valiant maintenance bot must have been attempting to maintain the ship's interior. It was a losing battle. The visitors inspected it in silent wonder, one walking with difficulty.

  Jordahk took one look at his grandfather, lying in the launch hooked up to Torious, and thought the man dying, but no urging was going to stop Aristahl Wilkrest once his mind was made up. He would see this mission to the end. Aristahl had shielded them at great cost. Jordahk felt that battle, though he didn't understand it. The man somehow reached across space. Or, more accurately, reached through a different kind of space.

  Aristahl implied that only he and Jordahk should proceed, the rest being family business. He did so halfheartedly though, knowing the siblings' great efforts to get them through. In the end, he agreed to let them come with vows of silence. They wouldn't speak about what transpired while there or afterward. Aristahl also left Torious behind. He needed medical attention, but the glitched personality of the ancient nurse was hard to control. No chances were being taken.

  The VAD line faded into the cargo hold. A control couch taken from the bridge was installed at the far end beyond rings of containers, machinery, and junk. It was elevated halfway to the tall ceiling atop the assortment, and a man stood before it. His clothes moved, or rather a crisscrossed pattern of circles moved on them. It was disorienting. The flowing outer garment manifested like intersecting pond ripples growing and fading. The four stopped at the base of a makeshift stairway.

  "You're not Thule-Riss Quext," Ek-Hein said to Jordahk. His accented voice sounded long unused. Slim and drawn, his cheekbones stood out prominently. Yet he wasn't weak, although his pallor was sickly.

  Aristahl stepped forward and stood tall. "Avere, friend. We come with his blessings."

  Aristahl sub-whispered, and his eyes changed. Gone was the lifetime of brown. Jordahk's mouth opened in astonishment. The irises were platinum embedded with diamonds of ocher iridium and purple numenium.

  How could Jordahk not have put the clues together? "Pops, you're a, a—"

  "Sojourner? Yes."

  Stirring and at least one gasp emanated from the siblings. Jordahk's mind whirred, but no words came.

  "Arh-Tahl Quext," Ek-Hein said. "So the elusive son of the Khromas appears."

  Quext? It fell into place for Jordahk. It was so clear now that he knew. Aristahl Wilkrest, Arh-Tahl Quext, son of a legend. That meant his father... that meant he—

  "Then who is this bearing the face of Thule-Riss?" Ek-Hein lost focus, and he scrutinized something far-off. "Or is it a trick? The Perigeum has come before, but I beat them back." His eyes began shifting. "Crafty snakes. The Archivers steal our secrets!" He grew excited.

  Aristahl put his hands out, placating. "Our battle. Did you not sense The Will's line? No Archiver can duplicate that."

  Uncertainty crossed Ek-Hein's face. For a second he didn't know where he was.

  "The Onus has you, my friend. Let me help." Aristahl pr
oduced a small shiny square of palladium foil. "You remember Alb-Sone Whaye?" He held up the foil. "Please, let me."

  Ek-Hein squinted his eyes shut as if to banish confusion and nodded. Aristahl climbed the makeshift stairs with some difficulty, motioning everyone to stay behind. He placed the foil on the back of Ek-Hein's hand, and it dissolved into his skin. The man wavered with eyes closed for a few seconds before blinking them open. His platinum eyes shone, sharp and clear.

  Ek-Hein grabbed Aristahl's shoulder. "Arh-Tahl," he said warmly. "How long has it been?"

  "No doubt I look quite old. The war is long over. You have earned your overdue relief."

  A smile of understanding crossed the face of the once isolated Sojourner. He considered Jordahk. "I can sense resonance. In him I sense The Will Is he your son?"

  Aristahl chuckled, "Heavens no. Much has changed. He is my grandson."

  "Come." Ek-Hein motioned Jordahk forward. "What's your name?"

  "Jordahk."

  Still somewhat shocked by the series of revelations, Jordahk climbed the stairs. When he reached the two Sojourners, the one who "sensed resonance" clasped his shoulder. At the contact, Jordahk sensed a faint tingle in his brain.

  "Jorh-Dahk Quext," Ek-Hein said.

  Jordahk perceived a tidal surge of activity in the numenium coupling. He held up his wrist, which felt increasingly compressed. The phenomenon reached out to him from across space, applying pressure to his exhausted brain. The universe was pressing in upon his compy from all directions as if it were a neutron star. Ek-Hein's head swiveled about searching for something. It didn't feel like an attack. Aristahl motioned that it was all right, easing Jordahk's wariness at the sudden strain. The bracelet felt massive; drawing like a sun.

  Something started happening atop a nearby ring of cargo. Cranium staggered backwards, his eyes glued to the phenomena. Glick palmed her grister in a flash, but thankfully did not draw. The hold filled with white streaks, not unlike those observed at the beginning and end of a downhill run. Shadows danced randomly as the streaks converged on the point above the ring. It was too brilliant to observe, and they had to turn away. Jordahk did so out of instinct more than need, but he noticed his grandfather and Ek-Hein did not.