by Alex Kings
Hanson stepped out. The shuttle's gravity released him, and he found himself floating weightlessly in the bubble. The air was warmer than in the shuttle, held at a steady Mediterranean temperature. Yilva followed him, laughing joyfully as she did so. She spread her arms and manoeuvring with her skin flaps, flew around the bubble.
Vyren's globe of water merged directly with the greater mass of water. There, he spread his tentacles, twisted them back and forth, and jetted a few metres away before retuning. “It is nice to have some space to move in,” he explained, as if slightly embarrassed by this outburst.
Finally, the pieces of computer crystal came gliding out of the shuttle, sheathed in effector field. Hanson couldn't tell who was generating it.
One of the Tethyans reached through the surface of the water, offering two rubbery, organic-looking belts. “You are free to move about the ship as you please,” it said. “These will maintain an appropriate aerated environment. The controls here allow you to move with your environment in three dimensions.”
Hanson took the belt. It was warm and, despite just being in the water, dry to the touch. Some piece of advanced smart matter, he supposed. He tested the controls. They were identical to the thruster controls on eva suits, but much smoother. When he moved towards the surface of the water, part of the large bubble beaded off with him, leaving him in a small bubble just big enough to hold him comfortably.
“Yilva Vissin Avanni,” continued the Tethyan. “Our computers are at your disposal. Please do whatever work you need to do.”
“Oh! Yes. Of course. Thank you,” said Yilva. She took out her tablet and extended it. “After gesturing at at it a few times, she gave a high-pitched, impressed whistled. “That is a lot of power.” She turned to Hanson. “I should be done in less than an hour.” Then, to the Tethyan, “That is enough time to see your jump engines, I think? Or the ship's eyes. Oh! I should also talk to the Petaurs here.”
“The jump engines are this way,” said the Tethyan, jetting off into the glowing seas. “I will ask some or your kin to join us.” Yilva followed, simultaneously working on her tablet and asking the Tethyan questions about the ship.
Hanson and Vyren trailed behind.
“Congratulations, by the way,” said Vyren. “You are the first Alliance officer to come aboard a Tethyan battleship.”
Hanson smiled. “It's quite the experience,” he said, looking at the glowing water surrounding his bubble. It felt as if he were in the middle of an endless ocean. In the distance he could make out various structures and groups of Tethyans. He was still having a difficult time getting over how huge the ship was. To see it on a screen was one thing. To be inside it was something else entirely. “I talked to the Admiral,” he said. “Would I get to see it in person?”
“The Admiral … spoke with you?” Vyren said. He seemed a little taken aback. “That is … unusual. But you would not be able to see it.”
“Why not?”
Vyren paused. “It is hard to explain. Do you know how Tethyan computers work? We use plankton. Microscopic biological computers floating in the water. They communicate using light, and form a distributed network across the whole ship. The glow you see in the water? That is the working's of the ship's computer.”
“That's what Yilva meant when she said she could work anywhere?”
“Yes.”
“How does this connect to the Admiral?”
“The standard Tethyan lifespan is 1,200 years. At the end of that, our most capable and competent are uploaded into the plankton computer. The Admiral is the collective consciousness of several individuals, containing well over 10,000 years of practical experience and knowledge.” After a small pause, he added, “It is more effective than an AI.”
“Yes,” said Hanson. “I imagine it is.”
Chapter 69: Engine
“You mean we're letting that bastard escape?” said Agatha.
Lanik looked up at her calmly. “If we have to. This isn't the time for revenge.”
Agatha sighed, hitched herself up to sit on the office's table, and ran her hands through her hair. “I know,” she said. “This doesn't make it easier.” She twisted round and looked down at Lanik's tablet, suddenly frustrated again. “And why can't the Tethyans find him? Aren't they supposed to have super sensors that can see through our stealth tech?”
“Yes,” said Lanik. “He must have found somewhere to hide.” After getting no response, he looked up. “Are you done?”
She shrugged.
“Dismissed.”
Agatha thought better of talking back. She could already tell Lanik was holding back his normal inclination towards discipline by letting her sit on the table and rant. “Alright,” she said, sliding off the table and walking out the door.
She went back to her quarters, where Srak was lounging on the floor poking tentatively at the plaster over his arm.
“Eulen,” she said.
Srak gave her a level gaze. “Yeah?”
“What are we going to do about him?”
“Let me guess,” said Srak. “Find him. Kill him. Is that about right?”
“I'd have added interrogation in there somewhere. But close enough.” Agatha started pacing back and forth across the room. “But how do we find him?”
Srak went back to picking at the plaster.
“Stop it. Sorrel said it won't heal properly.”
“Never stopped me before,” grunted Srak. Without stopping, he added, “Tethyans can see stealth, right?”
“Right.”
“So even if Eulen has a stealth shuttle, he can't use it as one. So where would you hide if you had a normal shuttle?”
“Inside something. Behind something. But there's nothing to hide in …” She came to a halt and stared at Srak. “No, that' snot quite right. He can't use stealth to fool the Tethyans, but he can use it to fool us!” She kicked at his hand where he was about to touch the plaster again. “Come on. I have an idea!”
Agatha strode down the corridor towards the rear of the ship, swinging Mr. Shooty by her side, with Srak's feet clanging against the deckplates behind her. She called up the head of the repair teams on the comms.
“Have you tried to do any work on the engine?” she asked.
“Which one?”
“The broken one!”
“Ah … no. It's too damaged. We have to wait until we're in dock.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Agatha cut the line and turned to Srak. “Great big cavity with a hole in it. No one's been there for a while. What do you think?”
They stopped briefly while she got into an eva suit, then headed for the damaged engine's access corridor.
At the end of it was an airlock. Agatha opened the inner door, and peered through the sapphiroid window into the engine.
The engine, taking up most of the view, was a mass of cables and struts and complex gravity machinery Agatha didn't have a name for. It was stationary and silent, clearly inoperative. A few pieces of it were clearly charred and cracked from weapons fire. Surrounding it, she could see the smooth casing.
She cycled the airlock, and opened the outer door. Gravity fell away as she stepped out into the engine cavity itself. With her thrusters she moved up, relative to the ship, over the top of the engine, watching.
They reached the giant crack in the casing, looking out into space.
The stealth shuttle lay squeezed into the gap between the casing and the engine, a few metres away from the crack itself. Hidden from Tethyan sensors.
“What did I say, huh?” said Agatha. “Who's the coolest shuttle hunter on this ship?”
She took a firm grip on her carbine. After looking around, she and Srak advanced upon the shuttle.
“Well,” she said when they reached it. “Whaddya think? Should we knock?”
“Yes, let's,” said Srak. He braced himself against the engine, then brought the barrel of his giant pistol to rest against a spot just underneath the door. He nodded at Agatha, then pulled
the trigger.
In complete silence, the gun recoiled, and the section of door twisted away from the rest of the hull. A few tiny scraps of metal rushed away from the opening, blown by the escaping air.
As soon as he'd fired, Srak reached forward with a middle hand and managed to slide his fingers in the gap between the door and the body. He pulled the door open. Agatha grabbed a nearby engine cable as the rush of air tried to push her back.
The shuttle was empty.
Agatha moved inside it and looked around. The gravity was off. Eulen had left nothing behind.
“He can't have got through the airlock,” said Srak and she came out again. “He's still here somewhere. Unless he's gone for a walk on the outer hull, and that won't get him anywhere.”
“Yeah,” said Agatha. She looked around the narrow landscape of metal and machinery. “Here, little assassin. Come out, come out, wherever you are.” She whistled.
Before going further, they returned to check the airlock, just in case Eulen had managed to leave while they were looking at his shuttle. No-one had passed through. Thus assured, they began their search at the front of the engine, circling round slowly, checking every hiding place they could see.
After a few minutes, something caught Agatha's eye. “Wait!” she said.
“What?”
She stared at the tangle of machinery. Amongst the jumble, it was hard to pick out, but … there! It had the right angles, the right texture. Part of a dodecahedron. The segment of an Albascene suit.
It was buried deep in the engine, and it wasn't moving
“How did he even get there?” said Agatha. Out of curiosity, she manoeuvred herself down between the struts and cables and pipes. There was just about enough space to fit, if she pulled her shoulders in.
It was only evident once she was inside: There was more space. She could keep going.
But Srak wouldn't be able to follow her.
She wasn't sure Mr. Shooty would be able to follow her either. She tried to get an aim at the shape from where she was, but there was too much clutter in the way.
She looked up at Srak and shrugged.
He nodded. “Be careful.”
“I will. As careful as I can be crawling about in an engine after an Albascene,” she said.
She moved down further, holding her carbine to her chest – safety off, but making sure the barrel wasn't pointed at her.
Scrambling through the engine, imagining Eulen coming this way, a though came to her. “Hey, Srak,” she said with a laugh. “Albascene gymnastics!”
Over the comms, she heard the comforting sound of Srak's laughter.
She lost sight of the shape. Perhaps it wasn't Eulen at all. Perhaps it was just some part of the engine that had the right shape. Still, she kept a careful watch and she squeezed into an adjoining space.
Three feet away, something moved.
Acting on reflex, before she even had time to register what it was, she flattened herself against the side. Part of the engine slammed into her back.
There was a flash. The eva suit's display told her it had been damaged.
Finally she saw what had moved: An Eulen. With its LEDs off, viewed from above, the engine gave his suit perfect camouflage. Now it was lit up, the laser on its middle section turning to face her again.
She grabbed Mr. Shooty. They were in close quarters. There was no way she could get a good aim at this range. Instead, she clubbed the black laser aperture with her carbine.
It rebounded off sharply and silently. She felt the jolt in her wrists.
The aperture didn't break. But the force of the blow turned the entire suit, throwing off Eulen's aim. There was another flash, leaving a glowing red circle on the engine behind her.
This gave her an idea. She let go of her gun and pulled Eulen into a bear hug, twisting the middle section so she was out of reach of the laser.
A high-pitched grinding sound came through her suit, and she felt the middle section trying to turn back to face her. She held with all her strength. The force felt like it was about to pull her arms from her sockets.
“Srak!” she growled. “Now would be a good time!”
“I can't get a good aim.”
“Oh for crying out loud.”
The suit's display continued to flash a damage report in front of her. The glancing blow from the laser hadn't hit her, but it had opened up the suit. Part of the self-repair system had been burnt out. She was losing air.
“Stupid girl.”
The calm synthesised voice was jarring compared to Eulen's evident anger. It wasn't coming over the comms, Agatha realised – she was hearing the vibrations directly through her helmet.
“I had no quarrel with you! Now we will both die.”
“Yeah, well, I have a quarrel with you, you cowardly little fucker.” said Agatha.
Over the comms, she heard Srak calling for help. It wouldn't reach her in time – her air supply was already half gone.
Chapter 70: Results
Effector fields twisted round her arms and waist, squeezing, trying to wrench her away from the suit. They were far more agile, more effective, than human arms could ever been. Albascene gymnastics, she thought again with a grim laugh.
It was everything she could do just to hold on. Her muscles burned. Her air was still running out. She had to do something.
She scrambled for a foothold. Her feet kicked into empty air, then glanced against something. On the third try she found something steady.
She pushed off against it has hard as she could, smacking the top segments of Eulen's suit against the engine behind him. The clang sounded tinny and distant as it came through the suit to her helmet.
The effector fields twisting at her body weakened momentarily.
She kicked off again. Another clang.
More effector fields started to twist around her legs. She kicked again as hard as she could. The fields pulled back.
“Stop,” said Eulen. The voice sounded weak and distorted.
She kept kicking.
The fields weakened, but her air supply was going fast Less than a fifth left. She was starting to feel light-headed.
Mr. Shooty caught her eye, floating at an angle to her side, a couple of feet away.
She kicked one more, then released Eulen's suit. In the fraction of a second it took him to realise what had happened, she reached for the carbine.
The middle section turned. The laser aperture came towards her.
She had no time to aim properly. But at this range it didn't matter. One-handed, she turned the gun so it was facing at Eulen's suit, and pulled the trigger with her thumb.
Recoil pulled the gun out of her hand.
No laser shot came.
A small geyser erupted out of Eulen's middle section. The water boiled as it emerged into the vacuum, leaving a train of small, neon-coloured fish floating away. His LEDs went dark.
Agatha put a hand over the hole in her suit. Not perfect, but it would slow down the loss enough for her to make it out.
“I got him,” she told Srak over the comms, then gave the suit a kick.
The geyser died down slowly, but it was still going when she started crawling out of the engine.
*
The Petaurs seemed to have adapted easily to the Firmament's environment. They moved about in their bubbles gracefully, moving in all sort of orientations with their skin-flaps open as if they were gliding.
One of them, a former pilot called Charin, told Hanson about their living situation. They each had a larger bubble as their quarters in some section of the ship separated by membranes. It was better by far than the cells they had been in, though the food and toilets took some getting used to. The Tethyans themselves were polite, if standoffish, though a few seemed curious, in a shy sort of way.
It made Hanson wonder if they were seeing the start of something now here. Usually Tethyans interacted with other species on Tethya city, in safe places like the museum, where they played the role
of educators and guardians. It was exceedingly rare for a Tethyan ship to have other species on board. Now this one, besides himself, had an entire group of Petaurs living in it, even if only temporarily.
Perhaps this was a new experience for the Admiral, even with its tens of thousands years of collective experience. Perhaps it would lead to greater things further down the line.
Yilva, meanwhile, was playing the starstruck tourist while the immense computational power of the Firmament chewed away at her calculations. She talked with Vyren about the jump engines, then about the tiny ancestors of the battleships before they were genetically engineered. And when she talked with the other Petaurs, Hanson noticed, she seemed more comfortable.
Charin was explaining why the tiny supply of air in the bubbles didn't suffocate them: “The effector field! It doesn't just hold the bubble open. It exchanges oxygen and carbon dioxide with the water, so you're connected to the same life support system as the Tethyans.”
Hanson's comm chimed. “Excuse me,” he said to Charin, then answered it. “Hanson here. What's the problem?”
“We've got an incident,” said Lanik. “It's Srak and Agatha.”
*
“What the hell were you thinking?” Hanson glared over his desk at Srak and Agatha. “You have the entire crew ready to help.”
Srak shrugged. “Old habits die hard,” he said. “We're used to doing things ourselves.”
“So you just forgot to call for backup?”
Srak seemed to consider this for a moment. “Pretty much, yeah,” he said.
“And what if something had gone wrong?” He turned to Agatha. “What if Eulen had got a clear shot and killed you?”
“Well, he didn't, did he?”
“By the sound of it, he came within an inch of doing so.”