by T. F. Grant
“Just thinking out loud. But it’s weird, ain’t it? I mean, why would Telo just go offline like that? It… I mean, he had its own generators. How’d all the power just go offline like that? When we jumped, this section of the ship was fully operational. Even the hull repair system worked when those damned…” She couldn’t bring herself to voice it, but she continued the thought in her head, When those damned Markesians sliced us apart as if we were just a tulak steak.
“I got nothing,” Bookworm said. “I mean, who knows? I read some crazy stories, but what if it’s not all fiction? What if some of these colony authors did all the weird shit that they wrote about in their books?”
“So what are you saying?”
“What if this place we’ve come to is responsible. I mean, look at it out there, thousands of hulks all messed up and ruined. Ships could have been jumping here for centuries, or millennia. There’s obviously some force that affects electricity or something.”
“But why did Telo choose this place?”
“What if he didn’t? Choose, I mean, what if it’s just a quirk of space? Perhaps Telo’s astrogation programs were buggy? Who knows how AIs evolve. Don’t you remember when they first installed him, how juvenile he seemed, but then how quickly he learned and evolved?”
“Are you saying that Telo made a mistake? He what, panicked? He was just software.” Even as she said it, this felt like a betrayal to Sara. All those long talks with the AI, and now she was treating him as if he was just a piece of tech.
Bookworm shook his head. “Nah, sister, Telo was more than software. The damned thing was alive.”
“How do you know?” Sara asked, wanting a definitive answer for how she felt too.
Bookworm shrugged. “Just a feeling I got. There was this one time when I was cataloging my books in my bunk when—”
“Heads-up,” DeLaney shouted.
Sara looked up and dodged to the side, pushing Bookworm away from her as two life-suits crashed down between them, nanoweave fabric limbs flailing like falling bodies. The helmets clattered against the hull, ringing like bells. The steel-glass orbs just bounced off unscathed.
“Jesus, DeLaney, you trying to kill us or something?” Bookworm shouted up.
“They slipped from my hand, sorry.”
Sara shook her head and lowered her voice. “He’s going to get us all killed. Product of the academy, my ass. Seriously, how does a goon like him get a position as VC on a colony ship when he’d only ever captained courier ships in the safest sectors?”
“Connections, sister, it’s all about who you’re sleeping with at the time.”
“Really? Who’d sleep with DeLaney? Even a galaynian would refuse his money.”
“Haha, that’s cruel… but right. I don’t know how it came about, but the rumor amongst us mercenary crews was that he’d had a family connection to Crown Central that ran all the way to President Aleatra through various degrees of removal. And one of the old matriarchs saw something in him… well, saw something on him at least. Those old crones probably hadn’t been sexually satisfied in hundreds of years. Even the best cryo can’t keep ’em fresh forever.”
Sara screwed up her face. “That’s grim—for both concerned.”
“I don’t judge. Each to their own. Besides, he wasn’t going anywhere as a courier; he couldn’t even find his way out of the system most of the time. The Crown probably saw this as a way of getting him out of the way. And with Telo in charge, DeLaney was only here for tradition.”
“Hey, you two, look sharp.” DeLaney lowered a graphene rope. “Air tanks coming down. Best get in your suits now; things don’t look good up here.”
“What do you mean?” Sara asked.
Margo looked down at her from the gloom. Sara could just make out a pensive expression on her face. Her shoulders tightened. “There is a degree of hull damage,” the Hentian said with her usual neutral tone as though she were just delivering a fun fact.
“How bad? Is it breached?”
“Nothing is breached yet,” DeLaney said, his head shrouded in the shadow of the room above him. “Let’s not take the risk, though. Suits on. Now.”
“Send down a couple more suits, then.” Bookworm gestured to Humphrey and Prescott. “Or had you forgotten about our wounded.”
“Of course not,” DeLaney said and disappeared back into the room.
“Of course not,” Bookworm mimicked savagely.
Murlowe clambered down the side of the bridge and checked the two men. “They’re awake,” he said and helped them to sit up.
“What happened?” Prescott asked. “Oh my, we were attacked. Did we escape? Why is the ship on its side? Did we crash onto a planet? What happened?”
“Your guess is as good as anyone’s,” Bookworm said.
“Who are you?” Prescott snapped. “I wish to speak with someone in authority, not some grease monkey.”
“Oi, DeLaney,” Bookworm shouted. “One of your people here, wanting an update.”
Humphrey, on the other hand, got to his feet, and started seeing how he could help. Like a crewmate should.
It took DeLaney a little while to answer the arrogant prig Prescott’s questions, and while he did so, everybody else suited up. They connected the air canisters to their backs but didn’t initiate the feed, deciding to use the air left in the ship before using their reserves. Prescott needed a lot of help to get into his suit, and complained the whole time.
Each suit had a two-way radio, but as Sara tried to speak, she realized it wasn’t working. They could breathe but not speak once their helmets were on and locked down.
“Is the air feed controlled by electronics?” Sara asked. “Or is it mechanical?” She’d never had cause to wear one before, and it was too dark to investigate.
“It’s regulated by electronics, yes,” DeLaney said.
“Oh, great,” Bookworm said. “That means we’re proper screwed.”
“How is that?” Prescott asked fearfully.
“Think about it, genius. Since jumping to this hellhole, nothing electronic has worked. For whatever reason, there’s something here that screws with this stuff. No Telo, no power. No air either. Unless we can suck it out of the tanks directly.”
“No chance of that,” DeLaney said. “The seals are all electronic. Unless you have a power source, you won’t be able to get to the air.”
Murlowe, for the first time since they entered the void, spoke. “I fear this is it, then. We should make plans.”
“What do you mean, plans?” Sara asked.
Murlowe and Margo spoke as one. “Funeral plans.”
FOUR
Tai ground the revolver into Linus’s jaw.
Linus sighed. “You’ve got about three minutes to clean up this mess. Dalgefs are heavy.”
“First pick,” Tai said. He had the gun, so he had control.
“First five.” But Linus didn’t care whether he lived or died, which made things a little… awkward. Linus smiled. “Two minutes forty.”
Tai, on the other hand, had things to do, money to make, women to chase; he snarled and said, “First three.”
“Deal.” Linus held out his right hand.
Tai transferred the revolver to his left hand, still keeping it tight against Linus’s jaw, and shook Linus’s hand. “Deal.” He holstered the gun and grabbed Felek’s corpse, dragging it into the shadows beside a waste chute.
He turned back in time to see Linus stab the dalgef in the torso with the creature’s own sword. The blade gleamed as it plunged in and out.
“Dead now,” Linus said as he grabbed the corpse.
Tai swallowed. He grabbed the dalgef’s flaccid legs and helped Linus carry the body into the shadows.
They were still stripping the bodies of anything valuable when the loading dock’s main lights flared into life. But they knew the geography of this cavernous space and were still obscured in the shadows of the waste chute.
“Time?” Linus said.
“Tim
e,” Tai agreed and unlatched the chute. The fetid stink of the reclamation vats wafted out. Linus dumped Felek’s corpse inside. A long moment of silence was followed by a wet meaty thump as the body landed on the deck far below. Tai helped with the heavy body of the dalgef, and Linus closed up the hatch.
Pounding feet echoed as scavenger crews and mechanics poured onto the docking deck.
“This”—Linus grabbed the dalgef’s shotgun—“this”—he grabbed Felek’s semiautomatic pistol—“and this”—he lifted a piece of jewelry he had ripped from Felek’s ear.
“That?” Tai pointed at the golden teardrop. “If the vul catch you with that, you’ll be guest of honor at one of their midnight feasts.”
“I’ll take that chance. Your pick.”
They portioned up the booty between them, filling the sacks that all Haven prospectors carried as a matter of course.
Tai reloaded the revolver, clicking the almost-empty cylinder out of the frame and snapping in a fully loaded one from a pouch on the back of his belt. He spun the cylinder to check that it was seated right, and holstered the gun.
“Next time, buddy,” Linus said.
“Next time,” Tai said.
They bumped fists and sauntered away from each other, with the loaded sacks over their shoulders.
Nobody would notice fresh blood on the deck, and even if they did, it didn’t matter. Without bodies, nobody could say for sure what had happened, and the strange doglike creatures, the grelas, down on the reclamation deck would have already butchered the corpses of Felek and the dalgef for the vats.
Tai emerged from stashing his sack in the Mary-May, and saw his mother approaching in all her splendor.
“Great,” he muttered.
***
Tai turned his back on his mother and her approaching entourage. He pulled a collapsed telescope from the pouch on his belt and snapped it open, studying the new ship captured by Hollow Space through the port windows. Well, half a ship by the look of it. Maybe even less. Ripped up and spinning slowly, the ship had already collided with some of the other hulks out there. And it was going to hit that old stripped-clean hulk that most people used for target practice.
Tai adjusted the focus of the telescope, zooming in slightly, and took a closer look at the ship. Colorful. It must have been a sight to see at one time. A mosaic pattern of black and reds on the side of the ship, shattered now of course, no way of telling what it was supposed to be.
That ship had been in a fight.
And had lost badly.
The whisper of leather skirts behind him.
“Hello, Mother,” Tai said, without turning around. He could see a seam of silvery metal slashing across the back of the ship. Titanium? Good pickings on that hulk.
“Tairon,” his mother said.
He turned slowly.
She was dressed in a dress of red solan leather, the skirt full and the bodice tight. Wings of stiffened leather framed her face; her jewelry sparkled in the harsh light of the dock. Rubies and gold with the highlights picked out in diamonds. They didn’t call Miriam Cauder the ‘Red Cauder’ for nothing, and she lived up to the name in all sorts of ways.
Her secretary scurried around her in a tight circle. Chegans, who were related to the grelas carrion farmers on the reclamation decks, could not stay still for long. Small quadrupeds with sad faces and telepathic abilities, chegans were rare on the station, but the Cauder clan could afford the best help.
—It is good to see you, Tairon Cauder. The voice tickled at the aural centers of Tai’s brain. He appreciated the delicacy; telepaths had to dial down the imagery of their communications to converse with humans.
“And you, Reginous Phan.” Tai bowed.
Hela, Miriam’s personal enforcer, nodded to Tai. A small human woman with a deadly reputation, scars crisscrossed her face, which only added to her beauty.
Five other guards, a motley assortment of species, with assorted firearms in their hands and eyes scanning the surroundings with professional efficiency, formed a semicircle around the two Cauders, Reginous, and Hela.
Miriam said, “Felek is looking for you.”
“Is he?” Tai asked. “Haven’t seen him.”
“Borrowing from the vul, Tairon. Trading on our name. How far you have fallen.”
“I get by. What do you want?”
“That cutter of yours is the fastest ship in dock. How would you like to pick up some quick cash?”
“Twenty-eighty.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Seventy-thirty.”
“Reverse that.”
“Very well, fifty-fifty.”
“Sixty-forty. Or I’ll blast out there by myself and lay the claim.”
“What will you use for fuel?”
“This is a pure gold deal. I’ll get credit.” Tai grinned. “Better hurry, Mother, the law will be here soon, and then the deals get messy.”
—He is correct. The commandant is on his way. He brings a Scholar with him.
“Which one?” Tai asked.
—Sweet-Sap-Rising.
Miriam snarled, held out her hand, and said, “Fifty-five–forty-five.”
Tai grabbed her hand before she changed her mind. “Deal.”
Kina loped across the deck with Tooize and the kronacs. “Fresh meat,” she called.
One of Miriam’s bodyguards lifted his submachine gun and blocked her path. Tai rested his hand on his Dorian revolver.
“Step back, friend,” he said softly. “Real slow.”
Miriam nodded, and the guard lowered his gun. Stepping back into formation, he resumed scanning the surroundings with professional indifference.
“Family reunion,” Tooize whistled.
“Yeah,” Tai said. “Get the Mary fueled. We need to blast fast, hard, and now.”
FIVE
Sara pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her back against what used to be the ceiling of the ship. Wires and ducting ran all the way back to the sealed scar from the earlier battle. The image of all those stasis units drifting away, being picked off one at a time by those Markesian bastards, threatened to bring tears to her eyes.
Although she wasn’t usually sentimental about things, something that devastating was beyond normal cognition. Almost her entire species were sitting with her waiting to die, and one of them was reading a damned book as if he had nothing better to do.
The Hentians were babbling again. God knows what they were saying, probably some bullshit holy ritual. The humans from Hentia were all about their inner spirit or some such crap. Sara grew up on a shit-hole mining colony where the only things that mattered were digging ore and not getting diced and sliced by the machinery.
“We can’t just sit here, waiting to die,” she said. “We’ve got to at least try something.” She aimed it at DeLaney, their de-facto captain, whatever good that would do. His face was glossy with panic sweat.
“Suggestions, sister,” Bookworm said as he turned another page. He was reading some ridiculous old book written in the nineteenth century. Humanity had no idea back then, and their stories seemed to her to be utterly ridiculous, but Bookworm would risk his life in order to procure one for his growing collection.
“I’ve got a few suggestions for you, Bookworm.”
He guffawed.
“Seriously? You’re laughing at a time like this?”
He shrugged. “What do you expect me to do, eh? Rant and rave? We’re up the chute without a prayer. Might as well enjoy what little we’ve got.”
“And what about you, DeLaney?” Sara asked. “Anything the Crown might have taught you for this kind of thing? Perhaps something you picked up from your extensive training?” She didn’t even attempt to hide the snark in her voice this time. She’d had enough of the privileged class getting the plum jobs in the empire while colonists like her, the foundation of humanity—or what was left of it—were treated as second-class citizens. Third if you consider the AIs.
“Erm…” DeLaney rubbed his face aga
in as if the very act would pull some knowledge from his brain. “There’s the escape pods… there’s fifteen kept on the bridge side.”
“No power,” Sara said. “Unless you have a sail and some oars, I can’t see how you’re going to get moving. And where’re you going to go?”
DeLaney turned to her then. “Fine. You tell me what you’re going to do. You seem to be quick to criticize; what’s your plan? We’re all listening.”
The blood rushed to Sara’s face. She jumped to her feet, rushed to DeLaney, grabbed him by the life-suit’s outer pockets, and slammed him against the hull. Their helmets were open but butted up against each other as Sara vented her frustration.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I ain’t going to sit around here waiting to die like a coward. I’m going outside. There’s other ships out there, and I saw something before…”
It only occurred to her then in her rant what exactly she’d seen but had forgotten in the ensuing panic.
“What is it you saw?” DeLaney said.
Sara backed off, allowing herself to cool down. She took a deep breath and thought back to the image she saw just before Telo died and the power cut. “A station and a planet, or at least what I thought was a planet.”
The others stared up at them.
Bookworm gave her a wide-eyed ‘what the hell’ look. “You what? You’re just telling us this now?”
“Hey, I don’t know if you realized, but if you took your head out of your damned stories for five minutes, you’d have seen we were all a bit panicked. You know, the rest of our species floating off into space, the Markesians kicking our ass. Sorry if my memory wasn’t perfect. You ass.”
“Are you sure?” DeLaney said. “A station and a planet, where?”
Sara closed her eyes, trying to reverse the situation and place the ship and her location to where it was when she saw the image. She traced it back, trying to ascertain where it would be now in relation to her new position. This was her skill, the reason she got the job as pathetic human backup to the superior AI navigators.