Infinite Stars

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  “No. Announcing ourselves this far out is too risky. We don’t know what the attackers might do and we probably wouldn’t like it. We need to be close enough to intervene. Nav, do you have any tighter coordinates?”

  “Yes, Admiral; transmitting with margin of error.”

  “Next jump, two thirds of estimated distance, another pause for recalibration and assessment. Same formation. On my mark.”

  This time Eistfod emerged from jump exactly in position, as did the others. “Learning,” Pordre commented.

  “On mark,” Navigation One said. “Margin of error 0.5 kilometers.”

  “Excellent,” Ky said. “We want to come out of nowhere and scare the attackers—but be close enough to attack them, and far enough to have a decent delay before powered weapons can get to us.”

  Ky’s group came out of the next microjump only about eighty kilometers from the base: weapons hot, and their automated challenge sending. NavOne scrambled to dump their residual velocity to match the base’s.

  The situation looked dire. A fat-bodied tradeship, smaller even than Quadlock, was firing at the former pirate base. Ky hadn’t been this close to it in the war, the only time she’d been in that system before. Now she could see that the “base” must have started out as a deepspace automated mine, spreading out from its original control dome to form a complicated structure of pipes, drill stations, processing nodes, and warehouses for the final refined product, with several former docking points, only one of them still whole.

  Selanyss stripped the beacon off the tradeship: My Way, out of Gretna.

  “Any other ships in system?” Ky asked.

  “No, Admiral. This is still the only one.”

  Gretna again. A society that engaged in human trafficking, as she’d found years before. That hated humods and considered them subhuman at best. Why had they come here? How had they known the Polsonites were here? Polson had been an all-humod world—was Gretna going after it just to kill humods?

  Ky used the onboard ansible to contact her ships. “If any of the survivors are left, they’ll be in those structures somewhere. The ship is Gretnan; we need to neutralize it without doing damage to the base, and we’ll probably need to sending a boarding party to deal with any Gretnans—they’re experienced in EVA.”

  Pordre spoke to Communications: “Match frequencies with any transmissions from the target, then enter our usual challenge hail.” Ky listened to her recorded voice identifying her ships as Space Defense Force, demanding that the other ship cease fire and put its commanding officer on. The Gretnan ship answered with a badly aimed shot; the missile never came near them.

  “Long range, underpowered,” Pordre commented. “They should know better.”

  “You have no jurisdiction here,” said a loud angry voice over the com. “This is our territory. Our colony.”

  “Identify yourself,” Ky asked. The viewscreen remained blank. “We have received a distress call.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything. We filed claim on this entire system and you’re trespassing.”

  “It was empty except for some squatters,” another voice said. “Buncha them weirdos. Manufactured, claim to be human but they aren’t.”

  “Shut up, Clive!” someone else said in the background.

  “They’re not human; they’re like robots and they belong to their manufacturer.”

  “You are in territory patrolled by Space Defense Force; your beacon reports that your ship is out of Gretna. That’s a long way from here; you need to identify yourself by name and provide evidence that you have a legal right here. In what court did you file your claim? Stand down your weapons, and prepare to be boarded. We will need to inspect and determine what’s going on here.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. You got no right to be here. Go away or we’ll blow your ship to bits.”

  “You might want to look at your scan,” Ky said. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

  Quadlock, on Ky’s orders, had now maneuvered through a series of microjumps until it had a straight shot at the Gretnan ship without risking any of Ky’s.

  “You better not shoot at us! We got hostages!”

  “I thought you said there were just robots here,” Ky said. “Robots aren’t hostages.”

  Selanyss gave her a startled look. “Admiral—”

  She shook her head at him and went on. “I’m glad you finally noticed that you’re in a hopeless position. Lock down your weapons, release your so-called hostages, and recall all your personnel to your ship. You will be required to allow a full inspection of your vessel…”

  “No! You got no right. This is our ship, our base. It was abandoned and we’ve laid claim. These humods aren’t real people and they’re ours now. We got a right to do anything we want with them!”

  “The dumber they are,” Pordre said, “the easier the take-down.”

  “Not always,” Ky said. “You weren’t there when I met up with Gretnans before. They made holes in my ship. They’re inbred for color, nasty, and short-sighted—no strategic sense—but they’re not entirely stupid. They think they’ve got a way out.”

  A face showed up on the vid screen at last, the same near-albino coloring as those she’d seen on Gretna Station. The man sneered at her, a curl of lip that must be intended to show the crooked teeth. “You’re that same cow shot up our station! I recognize you now! You come back and try that again and we’ll blow you away.”

  Ky laughed, thumb over her mic. “They’ve probably never seen a cow.”

  “You’re all nothing but perverts and godless cowards and trash!” That was a second face, similar in looks but the eyes had a hint of blue.

  “And you’re outnumbered and outgunned, so shut off all your weapons systems and prepare for inspection.” Ky kept her voice level and firm.

  On the auxiliary screen, the Gretnan ship emitted a plume of vapor.

  “What are they doing?” Pordre asked.

  “Breaking off from the base?” Nelson, sitting second scan didn’t take his gaze off the screen.

  “Maybe…”

  “You like humods, you can have them! Dead!” The Gretnan ship’s insystem drive came alive, and it powered away from the base. A long plume of vapor came out the docking arm: escaping air. “You won’t get us!”

  “They breached the airlock!” Pordre’s tone expressed all the horror of any ship captain.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Ky said, connecting to Eistfod and Quadlock. “Captains: pursue and destroy the Gretnan ship My Way; it has just breached the base, almost certainly costing lives. Don’t let it reach jump radius.” A small ship not near any large mass—it might jump in the next 35 seconds—and the debris from a hit might damage the base. “Eistfod, you have preferred angle.”

  “Engaging now,” Quadlock’s captain said, an instant before Eistfod’s.

  “Target acquired.”

  “Admiral—” That was Selanyss, now half-standing, gripping the back of his seat.

  “Not now,” Ky said. “Just a—” The screen flared, as Eistfod’s beam weapon steadied on the Gretnan ship; its shields flared, died, and the ship blew. “Quadlock: beam on high for debris cleanup.”

  “Beam on, wide sweep.”

  Ky turned back to the scan stations. “All right, Selanyss—what is it?”

  “We have to go there, Admiral—”

  “I will, but not until the debris field is clear.”

  “You don’t understand—they may not be dead—the humods! We’re—you know we’re modded for different purposes. Some can live in hard vacuum for an hour, even. With very low atmospheric pressure, below what you could stand, for much longer. We need to get there fast.”

  Ky nodded. “All right, but we’ll need to do it safely.” Finally—a chance to do something useful herself. Better and better. She looked at Pordre. “Captain, you heard—we need to send a relief party to that base and save what lives we can. We have the pinnace and the shuttle: which?”

  “Pinnace,�
� he said at once. “Better shielding, smaller target. My exec can take it—”

  “I’m going,” Ky said.

  “You can’t—you’re the admiral—”

  “Of course I can; I’m not the captain,” Ky said. “You have to stay with the ship; I don’t.”

  He grimaced. “And if you get killed, you think it’ll be fun for me to tell the others back on Greentoo?”

  “No. But then I don’t plan to be killed.”

  “No one ever does,” Pordre said. “That’s what worries me. I’ll call down to the launch bay.”

  Ky looked at Selanyss. “Come on, Tech Selanyss; you’re with me.”

  “Sir?” He looked confused.

  “I don’t speak their language; you do. I don’t expect this will be easy, especially if some of the Gretnans are still on that thing. I need someone along who can communicate with them, convince them we aren’t their enemies. Pordre, don’t come in too close.”

  She was moving fast as she left the bridge, glad that she’d suited up as usual before coming out of jumpspace. “Selanyss, there’ll be a suit for you in the launch bay; one of the other team members will get you fitted into it.” She put on her helmet and locked it into the neck ring on the way to the launch bay; the pinnace pilot and boarding team were already aboard.

  “Your weapons are racked inside, Admiral,” said the launch chief.

  “Thanks, Chief.” Ky punched in at the lock, and entered the pinnace, Selanyss right behind her, then settled into the seat reserved for her. “Get Tech Selanyss suited and prepped,” she said. “No weapons.”

  “Right away, sir.” Kajan, head of the boarding team, took the suit from Selanyss, who still looked confused, popped the latches of the front opening, and said, “Right leg in here.”

  Ky looked around at the others, all familiar faces, and nodded to them. “Selanyss speaks the Polsons’ language; he’s our interpreter, so keep him alive. He says they can handle short periods of vacuum, and longer ones of low O2.”

  “They have mods for that?” Kajan stopped fastening and checking Selanyss’s survival suit.

  “Yes,” Selanyss said. “Usually combined with the radiation-resistance and sensory suite. That’s why some of them may be alive after a hull breach.”

  “Hold onto this,” Kajan said to Selanyss. Then—“Wait—will your tentacle fit into the suit glove?”

  “Not easily. I can’t completely retract it.” Selanyss looked at Ky. “Actually—my hand already has a glove on it. Over the others.”

  “The other what?”

  “Um… this isn’t the only tentacle.”

  “Well, how are we going to protect your hands?”

  “They don’t need it, really. Just let me get through the sleeve cuffs—”

  Ky watched, fascinated, as Selanyss’s hand seemed to ooze through the suit’s cuff, followed by the wrist tentacle. He noticed her watching and shrugged. “It’s really a thumb equivalent, just too big to fit into the thumb of a glove. Don’t worry about it; the cuticle hardens in vacuum.”

  “Admiral, I’m getting a signal from the base.” Ky yanked her attention away from Selanyss and her curiosity; her displays told her it was the pinnace pilot talking.

  “Can you understand it?”

  “Someone with minimal Trade is saying Help, no kill and then the same jabber we heard before.”

  “We need Selanyss,” Ky said. “Kajan, get his helmet hooked up for multi-synch communications. Selanyss, the pilot’s hearing someone alive on that base, who has very little Trade. Talk to him.”

  By the time the pinnace reached the docking tube, Ky knew there were almost a thousand Polson survivors in the old base, all transported to this base as slave labor for Turek’s intended empire, and a small force of armed men from Gretna, left behind when their ship pulled away. Now that it had blown up, they were hunting the humods.

  The damage to the docking arm was clear on the vid screen—the airlock had been wrenched askew, pulled partly away from the structure behind it.

  “Getting in won’t be the problem,” Kajan said. “But if the humods don’t have weapons, we’re a small force to engage the remaining Gretnans.”

  “They will help us,” Selanyss said.

  “The best way they can help us is to stay out of the line of fire,” Ky said. “And tell you what the layout is internally.” Kajan nodded.

  With the boarding party suited up, Kajan led the way into the open end of the docking tube. Selanyss stayed at the back of the group; he carried no weapon. Ky had pulled hers from the rack, but also stayed behind the leaders.

  No Gretnans were in the open tube; the next airlock operated normally and though it took two cycles for them all to pass through, all made it safely, with no resistance from the Gretnans.

  “The Gretnans are in the original drilling hub,” Selanyss reported. “They are looking for more weapons. Polsons don’t think they’ve realized you’re coming in.”

  “If we can take them from behind, all the better,” Ky said. Another icon winked in her display. Eistfod had a boarding team ready to transfer, if she wanted it. “Come on. We’re through one airlock, heading for the central area. No resistance yet.”

  The long docking arm finally went through another airlock and opened into a broader corridor where three of the humods greeted them with a torrent of Mraldan. Selanyss answered, then pulled on his own left hand—which Ky realized was actually a glove covering a writhing mass of tentacles, four about the same length and the wrist tentacle, stouter than the rest. A thumb indeed.

  “They went down that corridor,” Selanyss said, pointing. He spoke to the other humods in Mraldan and they answered. “Our people from Polson have moved into the next node, a warehouse.”

  “Tell them there’s another boarding team coming in,” Ky said. “From Eistfod. Do they have a good count on how many Gretnans are left? And if they’re all in one group?”

  “In one group, and about twenty. They’re not sure, because three are being carried. They may have decompression injuries; they might even be dead.”

  Ky’s display told her the Eistfod boarding party had entered the docking arm; she waited until they had cleared the airlock and were close enough to see. They saw nothing of the Gretnans, though they heard a rhythmic metallic clanging, until they entered the dome-shaped structure that housed the original automated mining station. A cluster of men in yellow gear were banging on a door with something metallic. Three were lying motionless on the floor.

  “Drop your weapons!” Kajan yelled. Then, as the men swung around with their weapons ready, he said, “But they never do,” and fired.

  Ky grabbed Selanyss’s arm and pulled him back flat against the corridor wall, while the second boarding team moved forward. “Just stay put,” she said.

  The firing stopped before she got into the chamber. The Gretnans had charged straight into the boarding parties and now lay in heaps on the floor.

  “Sometimes you’re lucky,” Kajan said.

  “Sometimes you’re not!” One of the Gretnans rolled over, aiming at Kajan.

  Ky fired before his finger touched the button. Kajan looked at her, eyes wide for a moment. “He certainly wasn’t,” Ky said. “Now let’s meet our new allies and see what we can do about this mess.”

  The humods, via Selanyss, were glad to have the Gretnans dead and gone, but less happy with Ky’s suggestion that they all move to Adelaide.”

  “Why not?” Ky asked, when Selanyss told her.

  “We will be hunted. There is a… a genetically implanted code. We can be recognized.”

  “As humods? It’s obvious you’re humods, but they like humods on Adelaide.”

  “It’s not the same. We’re… registered. We have a trade mark… a patent… I don’t know which you call it, but those who came to Polson were escapees. Were made, created as prototypes then bred for… for sale.”

  “But surely now—you’d been on Polson for a hundred years or more.”

  “The
marker is genetic. Inherited. Can be read with the right reader. All it would take is someone from that corporation to be traveling through Adelaide and they would know.”

  “It could be gene-edited out, couldn’t it?”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know; I’m not a gene engineer but I know it’s been done for some conditions. And anyway, you can’t stay here. The base is ruined; you have no source of supply; you’re vulnerable to anyone who comes along.”

  “Can you take us—them—then?”

  “Not enough room in the warships, or even our supply ship.” Ky grinned suddenly as she thought of it. “But I do have an idea.” Stella would be furious, but she’d agree. She’d have to. “I can get you transportation, if you’ll go. And Adelaide has very advanced medical technology.”

  While the humods discussed it, Ky made an ansible call back to Greentoo, and had her staff patch it to Cascadia and the Vatta Transport office.

  * * *

  Eight hours later, back onboard Vanguard II, on the bridge as they headed out toward home, Ky rocked back on her heels and gave a long happy sigh. She glanced at her flag captain. He gave her a quizzical look. “You look happy, Admiral.”

  “I am. We got to rescue some good guys, blow up some bad guys, all while improving the navigation and combat efficiency of this unit, without a single casualty on our side. And I got to annoy my cousin Stella while actually doing Vatta Transport a good turn: a new and undoubtedly profitable route and a reputation as a company with a commitment to ethics and social welfare.”

  Pordre’s eyebrows went up. “Annoying your cousin is part of a good day’s work? I’ve met her.”

  Ky felt a twinge of guilt and pushed it away. “Annoying Stella is part of a game she and I have played on each other since childhood. She’s older and taller and beautiful. I’m younger and shorter and an admiral.” She shrugged. “It’s a family thing.”

  “Routine, then,” he said. “All in a day’s work.”

  Dave Bara’s Lightship Chronicles is a newer space opera series—one with a classic feel but modern sensibilities and a growing fan base. His contribution for Infinite Stars takes place a few months before the events of Impulse, volume one of the Lightship Chronicles series, which also includes Starbound (volume two) and Defiant (volume three).