by Jaine Fenn
Bez was not sure how she felt about that. ‘What about Jarek?’
‘He’ll stay on the bridge.’
‘So he takes the ship in and out of the transit?’
‘Yep. ,
‘But aren’t you his pilot?’
The boy laughed. ‘Only when he lets me.’
At that moment, the lights dimmed. Under normal circumstances she would be sinking into technologically induced oblivion by now. ‘All right. I’ll stay with you.’
‘Y ou wanna come over here? You’ll be more comfy on one of the couches.’
‘I’m fine at the table.’ She took a couple of steps towards the galley area.
‘Suit yourself. I’m gonna get horizontal soon as I’ve had my medicine.’ Taro held up something small.
‘And what is that?’ she asked.
‘Inhaler. You know, for … wait there, I’ll bring it over an’ you can have a snort too.’ She sat down at the table while he came over.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it works.’ With an exaggerated mime he raised the small device to his face, leaned his head back slightly, and pressed something on the gadget. There was a faint hiss, and his head tilted back further, eyes starting to close. He made a noise somewhere between a cough and a hiccup, then opened his eyes and lowered the inhaler. ‘Now that’s much better,’ he said.
He blinked and looked down at Bez with wide eyes. ‘I’ll leave this for you, then.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘No, really. It’ll help with shiftspace. Helps with most things, really.’ He seemed to find that last comment funny. He put the inhaler on the table then turned carefully, paused, and turned back, wobbling slightly. ‘Nearly forgot,’ he said, ‘Jarek’s gonna shout out a countdown to the shift for you, so you know when we’re going in.’
Bez nodded. ‘Good.’ Anything to impose structure on the coming chaos.
He turned again and staggered off, calling, ‘See ya on the other side!’
Ignoring the inhaler, Bez went virtual. She took her head ware through a complete shutdown, right down to her chrono. Most technology failed in shiftspace … yet the ship would still have gravity and light and heat and air. And human bodies, themselves no more than machines, would continue to function, after a fashion. It was illogical. Or possibly not, given what drove the translation through shifts pace. But that in itself was the stuff of nightmares.
‘Five minutes!’
Bez jumped at Jarek’s shout. She stared at the inhaler. Should she use it? The only other time she had made a transit while conscious, she had not resorted to drugs. But that was before she had found out about transit-kernels. She grabbed the inhaler and held it to her nose.
Her throat tingled and her eyes watered. Immediately after that, someone removed the top of her head and started pumping her cranium full of foam. Then all at once the foam set, and the initial, alarming rush subsided. She felt all right. Better than all right, in fact.
‘One minute.’
Jarek’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. She attempted a breathing exercise, but it made her nose itch. She sneezed.
‘Ten seconds!’
Bez tried to count down the last few moments, but between the drugs and lack of tech she misjudged it. She had just murmured four to herself when the universe went crazy.
DERN
(Olympus Orbital, Ylonis System)
Everyone has secrets.
Dern Morvil had very few, and they tended to be small, awkward ones, like that time he accidentally saw his mother naked when he was twelve. Ten years on, the memory still made his ears burn.
Today was his birthday, and his inbox was full of greetings from friends. There was also mail from Starscape Academy, but initially he ignored that, checking his other messages first. Several of the birthday links were from his old terceball comrades, which cheered him up; even two years after he had acknowledged he was never going to play in the AWL, the team still kept in touch.
He hesitated; he wanted to fire up the beevee link to see what the universe at large had to say, but he still hadn’t opened that message from the Academy. He couldn’t keep putting it off.
The news was n8 surprise: he had failed his third and final retake of the entrance exams. The Academy didn’t want him. He tried not to be angry, not to think how if he had known an injury was going to end his career as a professional terceball player before it had properly begun, he would have devoted himself to science, not sport. There was, he told himself, no point railing against the UnIverse.
As a boy, Dern had got it into his head that Starscape was short for ‘Star Escape’ - escape to the stars. He had thought terceball would let him do that: the top players in the All Worlds League actually lived on starliners. A lifestyle that combined his two great loves - sport and space - had been a dream worth sacrificing everything else for. And even when a disastrous tackle shattered his shoulder and ended one dream, there was still Starscape itself, the company that made Ylonis famous.
Except, he hadn’t made the grade.
He should look on the bright side. There were other jobs at Starscape. The Academy-trained engineers who created the shiftships were at the top of the pile, but the corporation still needed support staff: administrators and fitters, accountants and cleaners.
He would never represent his system as a sporting hero, and it looked like he wouldn’t be following his mother into the Starscape elite, but he could still work for one of only two companies that allowed humanity to fulfil their potential as starfarers.
Or he could get his father to find him a nice, safe job in facilities management. After all, as Da said, ‘The shipyards might be the reason the orbitals are here, but without functional habitats for the workers to live in, there wouldn’t be any yards.’
No. Better a janitor at Starscape than a manager in the lab offices.
But first he had to tell his parents the bad news.
Before facing that unpleasant task, he decided to indulge in his daily contact with the rest of human-space.
He opened the connection and downloaded the compressed datapacket. Not many birthday greetings here; the messages came from his fellow ‘concerned galactic citizens’ - as the like-minded souls he communicated with called themselves, using the term with knowing irony. Nothing from ‘Orzabet’, though; he hadn’t heard from him for a while. Assuming Orzabet was a ‘him’. Given the kind of data Orzabet sent his way, Dern suspected the name was used by a small, tight-knit group. If Orzabet was one person, he would love to meet him, or her; if it was a group, he’d love to join them. His other out-of-system friends passed on interesting titbits of news that never made the holonets, and indulged in speculation about how human-space really worked, but Orzabet was in a class of hislherltheir own.
He swept a hand across his slate and exhaled, looking around his bedroom with its posters of the terceball greats and his carefully shelved collection of vintage animatronic miniatures. No more excuses: time to face the parents.
He still dawdled in the long, carpeted hall, for once actually paying attention to the spun-glass vases in their display niches.
Each one was a unique artwork brought up the well from the homeworld. The homeworld set the tone for fashion, for entertainment, for corporate policy. Mother returned from her periodic trips down to Starscape’s head offices railing at the dirtsiders’ atti-tude: happy to enjoy the profits and kudos of the orbital yards, but with an irritating sense of superiority springing from nothing more than living in a place where they didn’t have to pay for gravity and air.
The last niche was empty. Dern thought his mother had ordered a new vase, but it must have been delayed.
He could hear agitated voices through the door ahead. His parents had always argued. Dern knew the various tones of their arguments, and had even categorised some of them: the ‘Ma venting’ row; the ‘Da nit-picking’ argument; the ‘work it out by shouting’ discussion. Though he couldn’t hear the actual words, the tone of this r
ow sounded different. Perhaps now wasn’t the best time to interrupt. He was about to turn around when the door opened and his mother strode out. She pulled up short when she saw him. ‘Good morning, Dern,’ she said, her expression softening into a smile. ‘And happy birthday.’
‘Thanks. I, er, thought I’d have breakfast with you today.’ A stupid thing to say, given he rarely ate breakfast.
‘We’ve just finished, actually,’ said his mother, turning slightly.
Da stood by the long pseudo-wood table, arms rigid by his sides.
Now Dern had told the lie, he had to follow it up, so he walked into the airy day-room. His mother followed him back inside. As he poured himself some juice from the spread on the table it occurred to him that he might have been the subject of their argument.
Certainly they were both watching him like they expected him to say something. The morning soundtrack of recorded birdsong had been muted to near inaudibility. He took a drink to fortify himself then said, ‘You know I failed, then?’
‘Failed?’ his mother barked.
‘The exam. For the Academy. I mean, I thought you were …
that was what…’ His gazed flicked to each of them in turn. ‘That wasn’t what you were talking about just now, was it?’
‘No,’ said his father, looking confused.
‘You’ve failed your retake.’ His mother’s tone was reasonable, but he knew that look. She was angry.
He stared at the table as he answered her. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘Adonis’ sakes!’ snapped Ma.
His father made a small sound, like he had been punched in the stomach.
‘I was about to tell you but I thought when I heard you a-argu-ing that you-‘
His mother interrupted him. ‘We weren’t talking about you, Dern.’
‘Your mother’s been laid off,’ said Da quietly.
‘What?’ He looked at her, incredulous. An engineering job at Starscape was a job for life.
‘As I said, that’s not technically true,’ said his mother. She turned to Dern, lowering her chin in that way she did when she expected a fight. ‘Starscape are putting a number of their staff on “extended mandatory leave”.’
‘Indefinite and with a decreasing pay scale,’ added his father.
‘Which amounts to being laid off by increments.’
Dern knew his parents could quibble for hours over definitions, but this was serious. Somewhat to his shame, his main thought was about the money. He looked around the expensive garden apartment.
His mother, knowing him well, said, ‘To be frank, the Academy bursary would have been useful.’
‘You’ll have to get another job, son,’ added his father sympa-thetically. ‘A proper one.’
Though Dern had been studying for his retakes for the last few months, he had also worked on and off since recovering from his injury, trying out various posts around the station on short-term contracts. His mother’s status gave him a wide range of options, and he had explored a number of them, from accountancy to zoo assistant. He had been open to the possibility that one of the try-outs might reveal his future career, but up until today he had still believed that, having been denied his original destiny, the universe would allow him the next best option and he would end up at Starscape. ‘Er, yes,’ he said, ‘of course. I’ll try to find something.’
He looked at his mother. ‘I know you said I’d be limiting my career prospects if I took a low-pay job at Starscape and then went into the Academy, but given I’m not-‘
‘There are no jobs at Starscape, Dern,’ said his mother bluntly.
His father added, ‘This isn’t just about your mother. The company is laying people off across the board.’
‘They are?’
‘Yes, although they’re going to a lot of effort to make sure the media don’t overplay the story, so we would appreciate you not spreading this around.’ Dern recognised the dig at his contacts beyond the Ylonis system.
‘Especially,’ said his mother, ‘as it’s only a temporary measure.’
‘Why are they doing it at all?’ asked Dern. Building shiftships was massively lucrative: demand always outstripped supply.
‘There’s a component crisis,’ said Ma.
‘Which component?’
‘The transit-kernels.’
‘The kernels?’ Whenever he made a new friend outside Ylonis, they always wanted to know about the transit-kernels. Was it true they were old Sidhe tech? How come they were so rare? Where did they really come from? Aside from confirming that, yes, they arrived from out-of-system via a supplier who operated under conditions of extreme secrecy, Dern didn’t have answers to those questions. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Apparently there was a serious incident at the plant where they are produced. The supply has been temporarily suspended.’
‘What sort ofincident? Was there a shifts pace rift?’
His father snorted. ”‘Shiftspace rift”. It’s always the dramatic explanation with you, isn’t it?’
‘It’s the kind of thing his out-of-system weirdo friends would say.’
Dern hated it when his parents talked about him as though he wasn’t in the room. ‘My “out-of-system weirdo friends” might have a point. I mean, everyone just accepts that these mysterious black boxes arrive and we turn them into shiftships. No one asks for details. As long as the credit keeps rolling in, we don’t care.
You’ve told me yourself how powerful transit-kernels are, how careful you have to be when integrating them into a ship. Doesn’t anyone ever ask why?’ Dern quaked inside as he spoke; he never cheeked his parents like this.
His mother stared at him, her expression dark. After a glance at his wife, Da said, TIl look into vacancies in the hab offices for you today, Dern.’
Normally it riled him when Da defused Mother’s anger rather than face up to it. But today, he was grateful. ‘Sure. Thanks, Da.’
His mother grunted, but made no other comment. He said, ‘I’ll be in my room,’ and left them to it.
He had a beevee call to make. Back when they had first started exchanging messages eighteen months ago, Orzabet had asked him to report anything unusual at Starscape, and he had promised he would. This certainly qualified.
THE CURSES OF WITCHES
I’d like nothing more than to reveal the aliens living among us, along with the human traitors in their pay, and then have people turn on the bastards and rip them apart.
Obviously, that isn’t going to happen.
Even if I - we - could gather enough convincing evidence to expose our enemies and then orchestrate simultaneous, widespread release of that information, most people still won’t believe the truth. The Sidhe are dead: long live humanity. We need to out-think them, take a lateral approach. And we need to pick our targets.
Shifts pace was every bit as bad as Bez remembered.
She felt deeply nauseous and mildly aroused. She retained enough self-awareness to be embarrassed about the latter, although she was also experiencing a degree of dissociation from her body.
Everything she looked at sparkled and traced. That at least could be the drugs. Yes, she decided after an indeterminate period of time - linear time being another dubious construct - most of what was happening was down to drugs. Her current state was the result of an experiment on herself using a known substance with quantifiable effects. Once the drugs wore off, everything would be fine. Everything would befine.
The aural hallucinations were a side-effect of the drugs too.
Those voices at the edge of hearing, and the laughter, distant then suddenly close enough that she turned in her seat to see who was there. Just an illusion.
She put her hands flat on the table, pressing her palms into the solid surface, concentrating on that connection. Hands on table, gaze on hands. This will pass. It will, it will, it will.
A particularly fulsome giggle made her look up. The boy on the far side of the room w
as laughing to himself, head thrown back.
She had forgotten she was not alone. That made everything worse.
As she focused on him, suddenly he was no longer a gawky stranger. Instead, Tand, the love of her life, was right there, alive and laughing. Not dead. She made to stand up, flooded with relief and desire. But Tand was dead; this was another illusion. She made herself sit down again.
The next time she looked up from her hands, the boy appeared to have passed out. Her gaze lit on a box. She remembered that box. She had arrived here, wherever here was, in it. Perhaps if she climbed back inside, she could escape the grinding weirdness. She got up slowly, gratified that her body still obeyed her, even if her limbs felt too long.
The box loomed large, and she approached it with trepidation.
What was inside? She made herself look, tensing as she did so.
Just a mess of webbing. Nothing to be afraid of.
Why had she come over here anyway?
She stood stock-still, hands curled around the lip of the box, trying to remember why. And what. And where. Then, distracted by a fleeting illusory flash in the corner of one eye, she glanced over at the drive column. Oh, yes, that. That she did remember. The last, enfeebled males of the Sidhe race, not in unity with their machines like the old legends claimed, but imprisoned within them.
For a moment she was sure she could see the stripped-down nervous system embedded in tech; the mad, silently screaming mind inside the ship, inside every ship.
She turned, pushed off from the box, and ran. Or tried to: it was more of a stumbling shuffle through too-thick air, moving forward by virtue of not quite falling over.
There was a corridor ahead. She went down it. The far end throbbed and receded, tempting her onwards. That door - perhaps it was the way out, the route back into sanity?
No. That door was the airlock. Going through it would be a terminally bad idea.
She saw another door, off to one side. It was open so she went through it.
Beyond was an odd-shaped room: a torus, with a high ceiling.