Hollow Space Book 1: Venture (Xantoverse)

by T. F. Grant

  And then there was Linus, grinning at Tai with that dangerous bitch Evangeline in his lap. “All hail Bookthief,” Linus shouted into the silence. “Giving it to the Drifts, one leaf at a time.” He giggled at his own joke.

  Tai wandered over to Linus’s table. The big man’s eyes floated around in their sockets, seemingly unable to stay still or focused on a single spot. “Spinning?” Tai asked Evangeline.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “Downtime is a bitch for him.” She let her gaze rove over Tai’s trim body. “And for you too, if I remember.”

  “Never again, Vanda, I still have the scars.”

  “Oh, but you enjoyed it,” she purred.

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  “Your mother is here.” She jerked her head at the spiral stairs. “Basking in the light of your craziness.”

  “I know.” Tai walked over to the bar. “Hi, Jack.”

  “Tai.” Jack was the biggest vul he had ever seen—until the gen-modded monstrosities in the dark levels. He had taken a human name, turned his back on the packs, and fought fourteen challenge fights to make it stick. His face was a mass of scars. Tai had asked him once why he walked away from his people. “I like my meat cooked,” Jack had replied. “What can I do for you?”

  “A pint of Porter and a grilled-steak sandwich.”

  “And you intend to pay… how?”

  “Run me a tab?”

  “You’re broke. Tai, everybody knows that.”

  “I need you to do one more thing.”

  “I don’t do charity, Tai.”

  “Send a message to the Drifts.” Tai smiled. “I’m looking at going to the Old Station and need a deal to pay for my trouble.”

  Jack poured the ale. “The Old Station.” He shook his head. “Desperate moves, Tairon Cauder.”

  “Desperate times, old son. Will you hold the chits?”

  “Of course, same percentage as always.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Your mother is here.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll send your food down to you.”

  “Thanks.” Tai picked up his pint and wandered down the spiral staircase to the lower level of the bar. Soft carpet underfoot. A quartet of musicians playing soft music: a kronac on the drums, a bresac on the flute, and two humans strumming away on guitars. Nothing wild, nothing with any edge, not here, on the lower level of the Gear and Sprocket, where the real deals were made.

  —Hello, Tairon. The voice tickled at his mind.

  —Hi, Reginous, Tai sent the thought back.

  —Your mother is most anxious to see you.

  —That’s sweet.

  The lower level of the bar was arranged in alcoves and booths with a clear space in the middle for the floorshows. But at this time of the cycle, the floor was empty. This was the dealing hour, when lives and dreams were brokered in the ferocious economy of Haven.

  Tai scanned the booths, saw Hela, and walked across to where his mother sat in her usual striking, red-leather power suit, eating a fine meal and sipping a fine wine. He slipped into the booth, plonked his pint on the table, raised his booted feet to rest beside them, and grinned at Miriam.

  “Hello, Mother dearest.”

  “I’m eating, Tairon.” Miriam nodded to Hela. In a blink of an eye a bared sword lay across Tai’s ankles. “Remove your feet, or Hela will.”

  “Can you see my hands?” Tai asked softly. The hammer of the Dorian clicked back.

  “You’re not that quick,” Hela said.

  “Neither are you.”

  Miriam pushed her plate away. “You always were such an ungrateful child.”

  “Not always, Mother.”

  “No.” She sighed. “It had to be done.”

  “People died because of that scam. People I cared about.”

  “Yes.” Miriam sipped at her wine.

  A female bresac waitress, as beautiful as the males, brought Tai’s sandwich. “My mother will tip you,” he said.

  Miriam nodded to Hela. The sword disappeared back into its scabbard, and Hela tipped the waitress.

  “Looking for work?” Miriam asked.

  “Aye,” Tai said past a mouthful of food.

  Miriam ignored the splatter of crumbs across the clean tablecloth. “I have a job for you. It’ll pay the interest, plus a little extra for yourself.”

  Tai wiped the grease from his mouth and drained his pint. He nodded to the waitress and held up his glass. She nodded back and headed to the lower bar. “What is the balance on my debt?”

  “Twenty-five thousand,” Miriam said. “You were quite extravagant with your refit. I am allowing the work to continue. It will add to the value of the Mary-May when I sell her.”

  “At the time, it wasn’t on my credits.” Tai pushed his plate away. “And you will not sell my ship.”

  “I hold the debt. So will you do the job?”

  Tai laughed. “No.”

  “I’ll take your ship.”

  “No, you won’t. Ah, here they are.” Tai stood. “Nice talking to you, Mother.”

  “You are dealing with the Drifts?” Miriam said. “With that Drift. Are you crazy?”

  “Always.” Tai brushed the crumbs from his coat. “Twenty-five to clear the debt, you said. And another ten to get me out from under you. For me to be free of you forever.”

  “The Old Station,” Hela said suddenly. “The only reason the Drifts would deal with you after what you did is the Old Station.”

  “Perceptive of you,” Tai said. “You should keep an eye on her, Mother. She might get ideas above her station.” He walked away from the table and got a glimpse of which Drift they’d sent to do the deal.

  Freck. It was Sharp-Thorn. The frecking Drifts had sent that unpredictable bastard Sharp-Thorn to do the deal. Tai shrugged. Not ideal, but needs must. And given how quick the walking shrub got here, it seemed they had quite the desire for someone to go to the Old Station, but then he knew that anyway.

  Before the Venture arrived, the Drifts were quietly asking around for people insane enough to put together a team to go there. Back then, even Tai wouldn’t consider it. It was, essentially, a suicide mission. Ten teams had gone there, none had returned, and no one knew why.

  But the Drifts had a stiff one for it, and Tai knew he’d get the woody bastards to pay more credits than he’d be able to spend if he could return. The stakes were all on that ‘if,’ though.

  He stood tall, ignored the people staring at him, and approached the dire aspect of Sharp-Thorn.

  ***

  Bookworm twisted the wheel lock on the door, pulled it open, and swaggered inside. He was Sethan; he belonged here. But the memories of Bronwyn’s screams, of her dying breath tickling at his ear as he listened to the name, merged with the memory of his father’s voice, talking of stories old and new.

  He was Sethan, he was Bookworm, he was so frecked he didn’t know who he was anymore. The weight of the blade in his jacket, the weight of the vial hidden in the lining… The weight of his sins… all conspired to drag his mind away into a mix of identities.

  God, how she had screamed.

  Sethan rose to the forefront of Bookworm’s mind as if called by the memory of her voice. Disgust raged through him. Sethan’s personality laughed with Dylan’s mouth.

  “You got it, then,” Loas growled. “You got the name?”

  “Frecking right I did,” Sethan said. “You want this bitch’s puckering rat-pack to hear it?”

  Three vuls stood around Vekan. They snarled at Bookworm/Sethan but slinked away at a gesture from the she-bitch in the center. Vekan stayed; she wanted to hear this name. It would be her job to take out the Wraith.

  Loas lounged back in a greasy chair taken from a starliner’s bridge—a magnificent captain’s chair, now torn and covered with blood, grease, and dirt. Its white leather was now a filthy smear of stains.

  Behind the boss of the Blackmarks were a line of biovat computers. DNA-based operating systems, immune
to the effects of Hollow Space, discovered on a Castellian freighter. Sethan had come from the Castellian sector. A prisoner on his way to stand before the grand council, such were his crimes that only the highest court in that multispecies federation of planets could pass judgement upon him—until the prison ship jumped into Hollow Space and Sethan took his chance by Loas’s side.

  Only humans had walked off that ship.

  Good times.

  The vats bubbled, calculating in a nucleating fizz of organic connections. Useless to control anything, not really fast enough to act as interfaces, but they were very good at working out gen-mods and other complex problems.

  “So what’s the name?” Loas asked.

  Bookworm/Sethan turned and locked the door behind the departing vuls. “Get me a frecking drink and I’ll tell you.” He strode across the deck. “You ain’t gonna frecking believe it, boss. No way you saw this coming.”

  Loas turned his chair and reached into the fridge beside him.

  Vekan stared. “You smell wrong,” she said.

  “Yeah, guess I do, bitch.” Grabbing the knife in his jacket and aiming for the back of Loas’s head, Bookworm/Sethan gripped the Blackmark’s greasy hair and plunged the knife into his neck, twisting it viciously as Sethan took command of his hand.

  Too slow. Stop playing, you crazy bastard. The vul’s still here.

  But Sethan enjoyed the kill. Enjoyed slicing, slowly, all the way round and through Loas’s throat. The Blackmarks’ boss tried to pull away. Tried to reach his guns.

  Vekan’s lips curled back, exposing her fangs. Her claws extended with a click from her fingertips. A low growl came from deep in her throat as she prowled forward. Hunched low. Ready to spring. Ignoring the blood of Loas spraying through the air.

  Stop cutting, Bookworm tried to order his hand. She’s coming. Sethan laughed with Bookworm’s lips and finished removing Loas’s head with a final slice of the blade.

  Vekan leapt from the side of the desk, her claws reaching out, glinting in the dull light.

  Sethan/Bookworm threw Loas’s head into her face. She batted it away with a snarl, wasting a second, allowing Sethan/Bookworm to step forward, duck, and drive the long blade into her chest, through her ribs, into her lungs, and slicing through her spine from the front, paralysing her.

  Vekan flopped onto the deck. Gasping for breath. Unable to move as her nervous system made her muscles spasm and jerk. She was too slow.

  “Gonna have me some fun, bitch,” Sethan said, but Bookworm took command and cut her throat. Sethan raged in Bookworm’s mind.

  “I am Dylan Meredith James, you sick bastard,” Bookworm said. “And this is my body.” He pulled the metal vial from inside the lining of his jacket. Tilting his head away from the smell, he twisted open the cap and poured a little of the viscous fluid into each of the vats of the biocomputer.

  The enzyme, given to him by Sharp-Thorn, dripped into the bubbling liquid, twisting through the computer’s soluble matrix like a stain of ink in a glass of water. Diffusing and turning the contents of the vats black, the solution bubbled faster. The steel-glass of the vats bulged as the now acidic contents ate away at their integrity.

  Job done.

  Time to leave.

  Time to blast his way out through a bunch of torturing scumbags and mindless thugs.

  This.

  This, Dylan was going to enjoy.

  ***

  “We’re going where?” Kina snapped.

  Tai grinned in reply.

  “What’s the Old Station?” Sara asked.

  “It’s on the outer edge of the hulk field,” Tooize whistled. “A space station as big as Haven.”

  “Bigger,” Kina interrupted. “Sorry, Tooize.” She gestured at him to continue.

  “The Drifts are very interested in it. They have sent many missions to discover its secrets. But nobody will take such deals anymore. Because nobody ever returns.”

  Sara looked from one to the other. Tai was still grinning with a mad look in his eyes. He didn’t care, she realized. He would do anything to get out from under his mother’s thumb. But would he risk Kina?

  “What do you know?” Sara asked. “About this Old Station?”

  Tai’s grin broadened. “I know the locking sequence on the lower airlocks. I know how to get inside, nice and quiet, and I know where the right levels are—the Drifts have given me clear instructions of what they expect us to find and bring back.”

  “And what’s that?” Kina said, snorting her disbelief. “Myths about the journals and books they believe are there? You realize how crazy all that is, right? It’s just that, a myth.”

  “Not a myth. We’re going to the Old Station, getting the artifacts, and we’re coming back.” The look in Tai’s eyes told Sara that he genuinely believed this, but whether he was delusional or stone-cold legit, she couldn’t tell.

  “How?” Tooize asked. “How do you know this, Tai?”

  “Remember that Out-of-Sighter we rescued a half orbit ago? He gave me this.” Tai held up a notebook. “All the plans, the codes, the places to avoid, the places we can move freely.”

  “He was crazy,” Kina yelled. “Kept yakking on about ‘The buzzing. The buzzing.’ I wouldn’t trust him to draw a map of his own dick.”

  Sara thought of the pretty child with the long dark hair, cold and dead in a stasis pod. “I’m in,” she said, blurting out the words. “I’m going with you.”

  “What?” Kina grabbed her arm. “This is suicidal, Sara. This is the most reckless thing Tai has ever done. The paper heist? That’s nothing compared to this… This is assured death, trust me. You can’t—”

  “I’m in,” Sara repeated.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Bookworm stepped out of the elevator. The operator didn’t even bother to ask him for a tip. The entire journey, the woman in her tatty uniform just stared at him, her gaze boring into the side of his face, even as the blood continued to drip to the floor.

  He blinked the viscera from his eyes and wiped a soggy sleeve across his forehead. His lungs burned with the exertion, partly fuelled by his hatred of this place and partly due to the remnants of Sethan, who lurked darkly in the corners of his mind.

  Shortly after he butchered his way out of the Blackmarks’ hold, Sethan’s ID slinked away, just as Sharp-Thorn said it would. Even his physical appearance had begun to return. He watched it happening before his very eyes in the shiny walls of the elevator.

  So subtle, it was as though he was tripping on krunk rocks, watching the world morph and reality change. Krunk rocks? Why did that term hang around in his head when Sethan’s personality had gone?

  For a while, after he fought his way out, he collapsed into a heap and sobbed like a baby. He didn’t know who he was anymore. Didn’t… feel right in his skin.

  But slowly the tears washed away Sethan’s bile and hatred, and Bookworm became Dylan again. Until he found himself back here, in the hallway outside the library, shivering at the memory of what he had done.

  Sharp-Thorn exited the library and stood at the end of the wood-paneled hallway, the dim organic lights limning his silhouette with a yellow glow. The Drift’s eyes gleamed with a smug satisfaction that made Bookworm want to burn the woody little bastard to his roots.

  Standing before him, every cell and muscle aching, Bookworm smiled an insincere smile, knowing Sharp-Thorn wouldn’t be able to read that emotion. “I did what you asked,” Bookworm said. “The organic computers are destroyed. Vekan and Loas are dead.”

  Sharp-Thorn indicated Bookworm’s torn and bloodstained clothes. “You were commanded to do it quietly.”

  Bookworm stepped closer, looming over the Drift, devouring it with his shadow. The remnants of Sethan’s bloodlust and rage tickled at the end of his mind. Thoughts of tearing the leaves and branches from the Drift’s trunk shone brightly. His fingers gripped the handle of the blade until his knuckles cracked. His jaw clenched. “I did what you told me to,” Bookworm said through gritted teeth.
“You implanted a damned maniac in my head. You think it was just going to be clean and easy? You think I’ll ever forget what you made me do?”

  “I made you do nothing, human. You and Sethan are more alike than you think. I’ve seen your DNA, your intrinsic code. Why do you think it was so easy to implant Sethan’s mind into yours? All your kind are alike. Savages.”

  A sticky pale green vine shot out, but Bookworm anticipated it, seeing the telltale bristle of leaves just nanoseconds before, the adrenaline in his system from the fight putting his instincts and reactions on the sharpest of knife edges.

  Striking out and dashing back in one fluid movement, Bookworm sliced through the vine, making the Drift shriek. The cut vine shot back into its trunk. Sharp-Thorn’s eyes glossed over with a bright, glowing red sap as it rose up on hundreds of roots, branches and limbs like spider’s legs sprouting and forming a vicious cage.

  Bookworm knelt down and brought the blade around in a wide arc, ready for the damned shrub to attack, but as Sharp-Thorn prepared to end his life, a familiar, woody voice called out, deafening him with words that bounced off the paneled walls.

  “Sharp-Thorn! You will cease. This is not the time. Continue and you will end here beside the human’s corpse.”

  The ferocity of the bellow made Bookworm stagger and turn his head toward the library. Standing tall with his own, thicker and stronger-looking limbs and branches poised, Sweet-Sap readied to attack.

  Despite the fervor with which Sweet-Sap commanded Sharp-Thorn, the younger Drift just seemed to smirk, if their gnarled mouths could be said to perform such an action. He withdrew his vines and branches as Sweet-Sap drifted closer.

  Still in combat mode, the elder Drift turned to Bookworm. “Dylan, you continue to antagonize your allies. We’re trying to help you. You should be spaced for what you did. To attack a Drift… Why did you do this?”

  “Why don’t you ask Sharp-Thorn here what he made me do? Against my wishes.”

  “Sweet-Sap, this human refused to work on the project. I’ve only just this moment found him returning from…” Sharp-Thorn’s leaves rustled. “Look at him. He’s brought a disgrace to the Great Library. This cannot go unpunished. We’ve afforded these… humans too many liberties.”