Hollow Space Book 1: Venture (Xantoverse)

by T. F. Grant

  Rounding on his compatriot, Sweet-Sap leaned in closer, bringing his branches and vines close to Sharp-Thorn’s wooded throat. “Your rebudding makes you… erratic, rootling. Return to your work. Or should Old-Leaf be called. Such emotional behavior ill-befits a Drift of your age, did the rebudding go awry? Are you truly Sharp-Thorn? Or did the buds draw the wrong parts of your intellect into your new stem?”

  “There will be an accounting, human,” Sharp-Thorn said as he turned away and, without making eye contact with Sweet-Sap, turned right and headed into the stacks of the Great Library.

  Once out of sight, Bookworm dropped the blade and stepped back. “Sweet-Sap, I’m sorry, but please, you’ve got to believe me… he… Sharp-Thorn… this isn’t me!” He collapsed to his knees as the stench of blood and viscera on his clothes and skin made him retch.

  Two vines gripped him under his arms and lifted him to his feet. Speaking in a low hush now, Sweet-Sap said, “It’s not safe for you here.”

  “What do you mean?” Bookworm could tell the Drift was holding something back.

  “You need to leave the station for a while. Sharp-Thorn will grow wiser as he ages, but you must avoid him for a time. I’ve already made arrangements.”

  “I don’t understand. What kind of arrangements? What the freck’s going on, Sap?”

  The Drift shuffled quickly down the corridor toward the elevator but stopped short. Turning to the left, he reached out a branch to the wall. His enzyme glistened into the wood, and a door slid back. They moved inside and closed the door behind them. The room was small, the walls pressed in close.

  A phosphorous organic bulb made the place glow with a sickly yellow lambent light, the shadows greasy and thick. Underfoot, he felt a spongy softness and smelled a loamy, earthy smell that reminded him of running through the woods with his friends back on New Earth. He remembered James and Alicia and him playing at troopers, running over gnarled roots and scurrying on elbows and knees through previously dug out foxholes.

  He could feel the dirt now on his hands, under his nails. Cool and real, substantial. Natural. The nausea he felt earlier dissipated as the voices of James and Alicia called for him further in the forest.

  “Dylan, can you hear me?”

  The voices changed, snapping him back to reality. Sweet-Sap’s eyes glowed in the gloom like harbor lights in the fog. “I can, where are we?”

  “My resting room. It’s the only place where we’ll have some privacy from… that doesn’t matter now. Listen to me, Dylan. The Venture’s arrival has been a catalyst, and I need to ask you to do an important job for me.”

  “Wait, no, I’m not doing anything like that again… you can’t make me. I’d rather you just kill me now.”

  Sweet-Sap’s vines eased, and his voice hushed. “I don’t want you to do whatever it is Sharp-Thorn made you do, Dylan. I want you to help your friends and bring something back to us.”

  “I don’t understand. Who are you talking about? And what do you want me to bring back for you?”

  “A book.”

  Bookworm backed off, shaking his head. “I’m done with that, Sap. Books have done nothing but make my life a lie, and my obsession let people die who could have been saved.”

  “Sara and Tai need your help. I learned about a job they took from Sharp-Thorn today. I recorded it in the Book of Trades.”

  A terrible feeling of dread came over Bookworm. Sara was not in the right mind to make sound decisions, and by all accounts, with Tai’s debt, he’d need something big to get away from the grip of his mother’s manipulation. “What have they done?”

  “There’s an old, abandoned station orbiting close to the dead planet, within a debris field. Over the long cycles, many teams have gone there, but none have come back. Recently, we had the ship of the last team we sent brought back and discovered a series of audio transcripts. Dylan, we believe the answers to the planet’s devastation and the effects of Hollow Space itself are within that station.”

  “Why us?” Bookworm was beginning to feel like the plaything of the Drifts—a tool to use without any concern for the condition that these jobs would leave him in.

  “Two reasons, Dylan. Your friends will need you if they’re to succeed, and secondly, we need that information if we’re all to survive. What I’m about to tell you cannot leave your lips…”

  “You would trust a human.”

  “I have no choice.”

  ***

  Tai helped Tooize and Lofreal load the last crate onto the Damnfine.

  He checked the inventory: cutting lance, air tanks, medkits, ammo for the shotguns he’d bought off Sharp-Thorn’s preferred arms dealer—an ex-IC smuggler who charged them at least three times the going rate, but no one else was willing to deal with him. Miriam had issued a trade embargo. He had no leverage to trade with, and if the warnings in his precious notebook were anything to go by, they’d need all the ammo they could get their hands on.

  Kina hadn’t stopped trying to talk Sara out of it. They were standing at the far end of the round bridge of the scuttler. Kina held Sara by the shoulders, her face animated. He’d never seen her so passionate and so scared for someone else’s safety before.

  Being an ex-Wraith, Kina was known for her bravery, courage, and ability to kick almost anyone’s ass. Seeing her turn away from this mission disappointed him on one hand but impressed him on another.

  Tai nodded to Tooize as the kronac strapped down the supplies.

  Given the extreme navigation they would need to get through the debris field, he couldn’t afford for anything to come loose and fly about the bridge.

  “Sara,” Tai said. “A word, please.”

  Kina turned to him, a mixed expression on her face. For a moment he thought he saw hatred but realized it was just fear. As far as he knew, her growing relationship with Sara was the first time she’d gotten that close to someone who wasn’t a target for assassination. He supposed she blamed him for this predicament, this risk of her losing Sara, but they were both grown women and could make their own decisions.

  “What is it?” Sara said, walking across the bridge and leaning against the white ceramic wall of the Markesian scuttler.

  Tai waited for Lofreal to pass him before he leaned in closer. “It’s not too late for you to change your mind and stay here—with Kina.”

  “I… no, Tai, I appreciate the concern, but I have to do this.”

  “Listen, girl, I know what you’re feeling. You blame yourself for the stasis pods, but you’ll soon realize it wasn’t your fault. That grief and guilt will pass. Everything does in Hollow Space.”

  “You don’t know anything else,” Sara said. “Your life here in this station is… crazy, anarchic, toxic. I can’t live for more cycles here. Trust me, Tai, if you knew what was out there beyond the gate, you’d realize how frecked up things are here.”

  “You know there’s more chance of us not even getting through the debris field than there is of us finding a way out of Hollow Space? In fact, it would be a minor miracle if we even made it back here in one piece.”

  With a blank expression of someone who had gone to the very edge of their reason, Sara simply replied, “I don’t care about odds, chances, luck. I don’t care about anything anymore, least of all my chances for survival. I deserve to die. I should have died when the Markesians first attacked. I should have died in the battle with the vuls on the Venture. I should have died when we confronted Jhang. But I didn’t, and while I was doing all that, I let those poor people die in their pods.”

  With that, Sara pushed Tai away and moved back to the bridge before adding, “I’m co-navigating if we’re to get through this debris field.” Before Tai could protest, she added, “No argument. You can’t read Markesian. I can.”

  Kina shrugged her shoulders.

  “Fine with me,” Tai said. “We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

  Tooize pulled him to the side and whistled quietly, “We don’t have enough ammo or weapons.
The ones from Sharp-Thorn’s dealer are shoddy crap. Most are duds or too dangerous to use.”

  A shadow from the entrance of the scuttler caught Tai’s attention. He looked up.

  “Dylan! What the freck, man?”

  Bookworm stood in front of the airlock, a large wheeled cart packed with cases behind him. He looked like he had just showered, and he was dressed in a solan-skin jacket and trousers, with a gun belt about his waist. He wore his favored large-bore revolver on his left hip and a machine pistol on the right.

  Sara looked at her shipmate with eyes filled with tears. Lofreal and Scaroze bristled their feathers. Kina’s hand dropped to her revolver. Only Tooize, amongst the Havenites, gazed at Bookworm with anything approaching trust.

  “Go back to where you came from, traitor,” Kina said. “We don’t need you on our ship.”

  “I’m going with you,” Bookworm said.

  “I don’t think so,” Tai said. “I almost got spaced because of you. I am in hock to my mother again because of you. We are only going on this job because of you.”

  “You need me.”

  “Do we? Hell.”

  Bookworm pulled a large bag out of the cart. He dumped its contents on the dock. “Nanotube armor. I have a suit for everyone.” He glanced at Tooize. “They’ll need to be adjusted to fit on the journey.”

  “I can do that,” Tooize whistled.

  Bookworm glanced at Tai, a quizzical look in his eyes.

  “He said he can do it,” Tai said.

  Bookworm pushed the armor back into the sack and lifted down a heavy case. He opened it. “Grenade launcher. Twelve-round magazine. Two hundred rounds in the case. High explosives, EMP, incendiaries. I have two of them.” Another case. “Crown military-issue assault rifle, I have four of these and a thousand rounds of ammo, plus they can fire the grenades too.” Another case. “Auto-shotguns. You’ve seen these in action. Four of them, Three hundred assorted rounds of ammo. This case contains machine pistols, one each. This case contains hand grenades, all types, and this one”—he opened it—“a Napier minigun. And three thousand rounds.” He gestured at the other cases. “Plus a whole lot of other mayhem and destruction in nice discreet packages.”

  Tai grinned. He glanced at Kina, who grinned back. Then at Tooize, who nodded. “Welcome aboard, Dylan.”

  Bookworm glanced at Lofreal and Scaroze. “I made a mistake. I was obsessed with my old life. I’ll not make that mistake again.”

  Lofreal whistled, “Tell him we understand. But trust is not so easily restored.”

  Tai relayed the message.

  “I know.” Bookworm hugged Sara to him. “It wasn’t our fault. We didn’t know.”

  “We should have—”

  “Leave it behind you, Sara. There’s nothing we can do for them now.”

  He stepped back and looked at Tai. “Listen up,” he said. “We’ve got a damned job to do, and one way or another, we’re coming back.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Sara sat beside Tai. He was powering up the Damnfine’s systems and grinning like a child. “What a ship,” he kept muttering. “What a ship.”

  The Markesians had removed their seats, which were more like stools than seats that other species could use, and had replaced them with seats that either a human or a kronac could use. Sara felt swallowed by hers, but she buckled in all the same.

  They had also replaced the disrupter cannons with heavy cannons and machine guns that would work in Hollow Space, all belt fed.

  “Cannon?” Tooize whistled. “Why would they have cannons when they had disrupters?”

  “Markesians are explorers.” Sara shrugged. “They said so. They must have installed the cannons instead of the disrupters before they gave us the scuttler. Probably had them in storage someplace.”

  “Well, when the Markies make a deal, they stick to it.” Tai nodded. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  Sara frowned.

  “They could have just given us the ship,” Kina explained. “They could have stripped her out and just given us the bare hull with the drives intact. She’d have flown, which was all the deal required.”

  “Those are the controls for the maneuvering jets.” She pointed at the buttons and switches.

  “Okay,” Tai said. “Main controls are linked to this column and these pedals? And the main engines on this stick?”

  “Yes. It’s a reaction wheel system.” Sara pointed to the bulbous housing in the center of the ship. “Three sets of mutual opposition wheels. Two wheels in each set. They spin up. You slow one down and speed up its mate and the ship will rotate in that direction. This gives you full 360-degree manoeuvrability.”

  “Nice. Those systems normally break down in Hollow Space. We have retro-engines?”

  “On that lever there. The thrusters give you lateral movement when you don’t want to turn the ship to use either the main drives or the retros.”

  “Good to know.” Tai glanced over his shoulder. “We set, Ki?”

  “All set,” Kina answered. She was not smiling.

  “Here we go, then.” Tai increased the power to the landing jets. A heavy whine thrummed through the hull of the scuttler. “A bit more power.” The Damnfine leapt upward with a jerk. Tai controlled the thrust. “Twitchy, ain’t you, baby?”

  Through the steel-glass viewing port, Sara watched the massive airlock doors grind open. Balancing the ship on its landing thrusters, with only a hint of forward thrust, Tai guided the ship into the airlock for all the world as if he had done it a thousand times before.

  “You’re good at this,” Sara said.

  “What? Flying unfamiliar ships. I grew up here, lots of ships to practice on.”

  The Damnfine came to a halt inside the airlock. The inner doors closed behind her. Tai set her down on her landing gear and waited for the air to be evacuated from the chamber. The outer doors opened in complete silence, and the darkness of Hollow Space flooded into the airlock.

  Tai took the ship out.

  “Damn, that feels strange,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The grav is still on. Still pointing at my feet. It normally points in the direction of thrust. That’s going to take some getting used to.”

  “Will it be a problem?” Sara could hear her own voice. Neutral, calm, no emotion at all. She didn’t really care about the answer. If they died, they died, not her problem anymore.

  Tai glanced at her. “Nah, it’ll be fine. Are you good?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Right.” Tai shrugged. “We’re clear of Haven. I’m gonna get used to the feel of this baby.” As he said the last word, he wrenched the steering column toward him and slammed the main drives fully open. The Damnfine spun in her own length.

  Sara was pressed back into her seat, watching the view outside the viewport twist and turn crazily as Tai used his hands and feet to throw the ship around space. The grav-plates damped out most of the inertia but not all, giving just enough feedback for Tai to know the orientation of the ship.

  She had seen him fly the Mary-May, but had assumed long practice and incipient craziness went into the wild maneuvers he pulled. But here, in a ship he barely knew, she saw him doing things that no other pilot she had ever met could do.

  He darted the ship at a floating hulk at full thrust, his eyes narrowed, a faint smile on his face. Closer the hulk came. Closer. Until its dark bulk filled the viewport.

  “Turn, you mad frecker!” Sara yelled. “Turn!”

  Tai laughed and spun the ship away in the instant before it would have crashed. “Good,” he said.

  “Good?” Sara snapped. “You almost bloody killed us.”

  “You do feel something, then.” Tai turned his gaze on her. “I was beginning to get worried.”

  “You bastard.”

  Kina laughed. “He is that.”

  “Very much so,” Tooize agreed. He laughed with that strange huffing sound that the kronacs made. Lofreal and Scaroze joined in. Kina chuckled,
and Tai grinned at Bookworm, who started to laugh.

  Sara found herself laughing, doubled over in her seat, her sides aching, tears leaking from her eyes. But tears of laughter not grief. “You bastard,” she finally managed to say.

  “Aye,” Tai said.

  “Can we unbuckle now?” Tooize whistled. “I have to adjust the armor.”

  “Yeah,” Tai said. “We have two full cycles until we reach the debris field. Kina, come up here and take the controls. I’ll run you through the checks.” He glanced at Sara. “Can you pilot a starship?”

  “Yes. Basic training for a navigator.”

  “Good. I’ll train up Kina, then you, then the kronacs. It’s a long flight to the field, and I don’t want to be knackered when we get there.”

  “Why is this debris field so dangerous?” Sara asked, realizing that she was suddenly curious about the answer. Tai’s wild bit of flying had broken the dam of grief across her thoughts. “They’ll just keep to their orbits, predictable, easy to avoid.”

  “Not this field,” Kina said. She laid a hand on Sara’s shoulder. “Remember what we told you about time bubbles?”

  “Yes, though I didn’t quite understand it.”

  “The debris field around the Old Station is riddled with time bubbles big and small. They’re fixed and don’t orbit, just sit there, so every time the debris sweeps around on another orbit…”

  “Some are trapped in a time bubble,” Sara breathed.

  “Yes. They essentially stop, then start moving again, but now they’re colliding with other pieces of debris that didn’t pass through a bubble. It makes the whole field an unpredictable mess. Chaotic orbits, constant collisions. Smaller and smaller particles.”

  “It should be just a mess of gravel-sized pieces by now,” Sara said, frowning.

  “Except that, for some reason, it keeps on drawing in more hulks and debris on every orbit.”