A soft metal echo announced the docking. Pheno peered through the portal. The curved airlock rim blocked his view. He opened the spherical pilot chamber and braced himself to vault into the docking bay. The hatch opened; Pheno rocketed forward.
Something pricked his outstretched arm and everything went black.
Chapter 4
Pheno opened his eyes and blinked at the glare. A face appeared above him with an inviting smirk. He started.
“Gallia, you’re alive!” said Pheno.
“So are you,” said Gallia.
“I thought . . .”
“What, that I’d die in the Sigma games? Please,” Gallia grinned, “with the right intel, a girl can do anything.”
“You-you’re three sigma?” asked Pheno.
Gallia nodded, her grin broadening. “My life’s awesome now! I’m free; the Prefect named me Regent of the Northwest Quadrant; I eat as much as I want of anything; and people tell me how great I am and give me stuff! I get gifts, Pheno, all because of you.” She grabbed his shoulders and hugged him. “Gifts!”
Pheno blushed. He tried to sit up because he felt like he was laying down despite no gravity, but wide bands restrained him and the effort dizzied him into collapse.
“Easy, boy. You’re my prisoner,” said Gallia.
“What do you mean—”
Gallia placed her finger on Pheno’s lips. Her touch lingered after interrupting him. She looked Pheno in the eye, seemed to consider something for a moment, sighed, then slid her finger slowly, softly, reluctantly off Pheno’s lips. “Let’s make this easy, Ok?”
“I don’t understand,” said Pheno.
“Here’s the situation. The Prefect is sort of OK with the kidnapping of Ambassador Amonin. Apparently, the goo bags on Amo want to tax gambling earnings as wages rather than investments, which doubles taxes on Gressa’s largest income source. That’s why the Ambassador came here—to threaten sanctions if the Prefect refuses to sign the tax treaty.
“Fortunately, the Ambassador’s kidnapping diverted the Galactic Council’s attention from taxation to rescuing Ambassador Amonin, who apparently has a lot of . . . discrete connections, so as long as it or he or she or whatever you call those things remains abducted, the Prefect gets a reprieve. We’ll rescue Amonin from your friends in due course; but until then, the Prefect wants to show ‘progress’—that’s where you help.
“I’m nobody. What can I do?” asked Pheno.
“Your capture and public execution will appease the Amonins for a time. That’s why I’m here—to bring you back. You see how important this is to Gressa?”
“Gallia, I saved your life.”
“I know and thank you so very much. I didn’t get a chance to thank you before this mess started, but I really do appreciate your help.”
“Then let me go.”
Gallia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Pheno. Returning without you will stain my three sigma status. I cannot allow that.”
“You owe me.” Pheno pushed against his bonds only briefly before collapsing again.
“The old Gallia, when we were both bound to serve, may have owed a debt to you, but I’ve changed. I’m sigma now; I owe serviles nothing . . .” She cupped his face in her hands and raised Pheno’s head to gaze into his eyes. “But there’s more with you, you beautiful, wonderful boy. Our exchange before my game made you a liability. If anyone found out—”
“I’ll never tell, Gallia. I swear on my life.”
She gently released his face and turned away. “Only fools rely on loyalty. Surely, you understand.”
Pheno nodded. He understood—hated it, but understood.
“Excellent.” Gallia smiled warmly. “I’m glad we had this private chat. I wanted you to know you could’ve had so much more if you hadn’t killed those guards and abducted the Ambassador; I would’ve ensured that you had as much to lose as me.” She sighed and placed a hand on his shoulder. “But I do feel better sharing my perspective. I can move forward with a clear conscience.” Gallia looked at something outside Pheno’s field of view. “Ok, my crew’s in Transit Control overseeing your friends’ escape. Once they’re certain your friends flee, they’ll return to the ship and we’ll disembark for the surface. In the meantime, rest yourself. One of my soldiers said the stun drug Transit Security used on you really drains a person. You’ll need your strength; the final days will be hectic.”
Pheno thought for a moment. Something, an instinct perhaps, urged him to stall, but the logic of keeping her near eluded him in his brain fog. “How . . . how did you know I jettisoned in the escape pod instead of Ambassador Amonin?”
Gallia returned to him but waved off the question. “That’s easy. The Ambassador’s ship, like mine—I have my own spaceship, Pheno! Can you imagine, me, in space?”
Pheno stared at her.
“Anyway, our ships only operate when they register our bio-signature on board. It’s like an anti-theft thing. When the Ambassador’s ship continued navigating after the pod jettisoned, we knew he remained on board. Knowing you, I guessed you took the pod to compromise Transit Control for your friends’ escape.”
Pheno nodded feeling dizzy.
Gallia clapped her hands and grinned. “See, it all works out. You’re still enabling their escape just in a different way than planned.” A signal tone drew Gallia’s attention. She wrinkled her nose. “Why would they go there?”
Oh no, Ti, I hope you’re as good a hack as your ego thinks. “Where?”
“Trelia, I hear that world’s infested with bugs,” said Gallia.
“That’s Ti’s home,” said Pheno.
“For now,” said Gallia.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Rest.” Gallia moved out of view.
A dull thud briefly interrupted his slide into unconsciousness.
Chapter 5
I’ve got to stop passing out, Pheno thought as his mind swirled in the eddy of dreams bleeding into his stream of consciousness. The realization of his state yanked him back into the current. He blinked his eyes open.
Gallia stood opposite him, bound to the bulkhead, her mouth gagged with metallic tape.
Yep, definitely need to stay conscious.
When she saw Pheno open his eyes, Gallia squirmed in her bindings and bleated urgently into her gag.
“Oh, good, my hero awakens to save me.” Ti floated into view.
“What’s going on, Ti?” Pheno tried to move and realized he was still tied down. “Untie me.”
“Let’s take the easiest first,” said Ti. “No. As for what happened during your nap, let’s see . . . Eddientis and I rescued you from Transit Control, took your captor prisoner, and seized her ship; so now we have two, and this one has weapons! Oh, and we’re on our way to,” Ti glanced at Gallia, “you know that place we talked about before you went all save-the-day on us.”
“So we’ve taken two hostages and stolen two ships?” Pheno frowned at Ti’s nod. “This is not good.”
“We couldn’t leave them a ship to chase us, and we couldn’t take her ship without her,” said Ti.
Gallia screamed louder inter her gag.
“What? You want to talk?” Ti smirked as she ripped the tape off Gallia’s mouth. It left a satisfying red mark.
“Ow! Must you tear it off like that?” asked Gallia.
“Yes,” said Ti.
“You’ll never get away with this,” said Gallia.
“Why does everyone say that?” asked Pheno.
Ti studied Gallia for a moment. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
Pheno held his tongue until both girls stopped glaring at each other and turned on him. “I dunno . . . maybe.”
Ti frowned; Gallia, on the other hand, gloated.
Ti messed up Gallia’s hair, deftly dodging a bite. “What about now?”
Gallia lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. Her eyes blazed.
“Yeah,” said Pheno, though he felt bad about saying it and not because G
allia had committed to his execution just a second ago . . . or was it a rotation? How long had he been out?
“I’m going to punch her in the face.” Ti drew back her fist.
“Stop it, Ti. She can’t hurt you; it’s wrong.”
Ti rounded on him. “Wanna bet? Of course you do; what’s it matter? It’s only your life.” Before Pheno could respond, she thrust herself out of the room.
“She’s a strange girl,” said Gallia.
After Ti left, Eddientis floated in and untied Pheno. Freedom to move made the months-long, incredibly boring trip to Ertryd slightly more bearable. They had literally nothing to do. After the first parsec tenth, even the watch for pursuers lost its urgency. Ti grudgingly hacked Gallia’s ship to replace the girl’s bio-signature in the controls with her own. Stripped of her ability to operate the ship and thus escape, Gallia posed no threat, so Eddientis freed her. Pheno would have untied her, but he couldn’t touch Gallia without Ti losing it. Ti preferred to leave her trussed to the bulkhead; but Eddientis and Pheno out voted her. The consolation prize, a relatively new, well-equipped starship, only pleased Ti when Gallia had to ask for permission to get clothes or a hairbrush or some other trivial comfort, which Ti mostly refused. The two girls bickered constantly, except when they didn’t, which was worse for Pheno because they inexplicably allied and went after him for no discernable reason. He tried avoiding them both, a difficult feat with only three rooms across two spaceships plus one remaining escape pod, but this tactic made inevitable reunions more painful. The same held true for being alone with one of them. The least traumatic course forced Pheno to bear witness to their epic clash of wills. Eddientis delighted in the spectacle, and Pheno hated him for it—not really, but sort of. He couldn’t totally hate Eddientis not only because they were friends but also because Eddientis fell victim to the girls too, though less frequently than Pheno.
Pheno found temporary relief in two ways. The first involved teaching himself how to fight in zero gravity. Martial arts assume gravity exists. Thus, the techniques rely on weight shifts and balance impossible in space. Some aspects of terrestrial fighting, like redirection, transferred but most did not, so Pheno adapted moves to exploit inertia and weightlessness. Training in front of the girls seemed to please them or at least distract them for short periods with bursts of disconcertingly hysterical laughter. The second option for peace employed Ambassador Amonin. The girls detested the Ambassador. Neither stayed in its presence for more than a few moments before the Ambassador said or did something subtly noxious to drive them away. Pheno suspected the Amonin intentionally insulted the girls, but he couldn’t prove it. Regardless, Pheno and Eddientis befriended the Ambassador partly as a fellow object of ridicule and partly for self-defense.
“I am not tasting my birth pool, no ruins, no remains . . . nothing.” Molten rock reflected in Eddientis’s eyes. “Ertryds never being existent.”
The colossal scale of Ertryd’s destruction made Pheno feel trivial and temporary. To remember what he had seen in historical streams and confront the planet now left him speechless. For a long moment, all of them gazed through the portals at Ertryd’s remains. The planet, once covered by a vast green-blue ocean, was now smothered under a roiling gray ash shroud. Large plumes of lava broke through the ash at random intervals. The jets of molten rock were localized to one large area that Pheno guessed to be the impact zone. No sign of water. If Ertryd’s ocean still existed, nothing lived in it. The shockwave from the impact would have rended most living things into bits of carnage. Survivors would have suffocated as the ash settled into the sea. A massive debris field of large and small asteroids surrounded and trailed after the planet. This is a dead world.
The Ambassador’s fear of this place proved well-founded. Asteroids smashed into each other with alarming frequency. Even the smallest of these fragments could cripple a ship. Eddientis placed their conjoined vessels in a distant orbit outside the debris field. Yet, Pheno couldn’t shake the sense they were being foolish.
“Many believe they brought this on themselves.”
Ambassador Amonin’s translator spoke in a hushed tone. Nevertheless, the sound startled Pheno. “Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Aren’t you the student of history?” asked the Ambassador. It floated within arm’s reach of Pheno.
“Well . . . yeah, sure, but . . .” Pheno avoided the Ambassador’s gaze.
“No matter. Your history streams offer no record of Ertryd’s folly. Historians focus on the big picture—memorable events like wars, plagues, political intrigue. Small acts of daily life lose themselves among trillions of other inconsequential things. No one thinks about the grain of sand, only the beach. Something as mundane as mining warrants no attention.
“Why would it? Unlike ancient mining techniques that scarred worlds, solar extraction harms no one—a limitless supply of hydrogen siphoned from the sun to power civilization. Every technologically advanced species does it because everyone needs to move from one place to another or make this or that or fight one another for absolutely imperative reasons. Societies crave energy. What better source than a planet’s own star? Even dwarf stars contain more reserves than an over-populated, energy-addicted world could harvest before the star super novas.
“The Ertryds perfected and expanded extraction techniques over millennia. Their automated solar siphons fed on its star even after the collision. Other lifeforms copied the Ertryd’s success until every habitable solar system drained their star with millions of low cost and clean siphons. Effortless energy.”
“So what problem being?” Eddientis’s tentacles twitched. Pheno had never seen his friend strike anyone, but Eddientis sure looked angry now.
“Conspiracists—mind you, I’m not one of them—hold a less benign view of solar depletion. They argue the planetary cooling Ertryd experienced over the last thousand or so cycles resulted from orbital slippage caused by lower gravitational pull of their diminished sun. Tiny effects to be sure, fractions of a percent, but enough to generate a cascade of changes: expanding polar ice sheets, altered currents, more volatile weather patterns. Fringe scientists even claim the slight reduction in the star’s gravity affected the exoplanet’s trajectory, that an untapped sun would have pulled the exoplanet away from Ertryd’s original orbit.” The Ambassador glanced quickly at Eddientis. “Crazies—few people believe them.
The Ambassador scanned the debris field. “Still . . . sane minds, objective thinkers find dismissing other factors about the impact much more difficult.”
“Like what?” Ti floated closer to the Ambassador, closer than Pheno had ever seen her.
“Minor details, really, like the absence of ships evacuating before impact,” said the Ambassador. “Before collisions on other worlds, every starship on planet attempted to run the Galactic Fleet’s blockade. What had they to lose? Die on impact or chance escaping the Fleet. Few evaded the blockade, of course—necessary tragedies. The Galactic Union cannot integrate millions, much less billions, of refugees without jeopardizing our pleasant way of life. I expected the same with Ertryd—even more so. Ertryd’s technology powers the Fleet’s battlecruisers. Everyone assumed the Ertryds reserved something for themselves, better weapons or defenses or both. That’s part of why other species hated Ertryd: fear. Yet, not a single ship launched.”
“I noticed strange things about the impact too,” said Ti. “Some sort of schism caused the planet to shift just before impact and the tiny gravity wave and the blackout after impact.”
“The blackout is no mystery,” said Ambassador Amonin. “The Galactic Counsel embargoed information across the entire union following Ertryd’s destruction.”
“Why?” asked Pheno.
“To enable the Fleet to reposition and blockade Noolak and Trelia,” said the Ambassador.
Ti pushed away from the Ambassador. “No . . . Those two planets, the ones you said Ertryd intercepts, they’re . . . they’re Noolak and Trelia?” She shook her head fiercely. “No.
No. No!”
“Ti,” said Pheno. He might as well have been a ghost; her fingers already moved furiously over her forearm. Pheno saw flashes of numbers; crazy-complex formulae; lines arcing across stellar maps on her device’s projection. The holo-images moved too fast, but Ti’s focus moved faster. He had never seen anyone process information so quickly, then again he had never seen her compute.
Abruptly, she shut off the device and curled into a ball. She hid her face in her arms, but the spasms racking Ti’s body gave her away. Pheno wanted to hold her. He ached to comfort her; and, to his chagrin, yearned to be her source of comfort, but not in front of others—never; and he didn’t know why. Pheno watched her float curled into a ball and crying within arm’s reach and did nothing.
Eddientis moved first, twirling over to her as if space were only another type of ocean. Pheno watched the Ertryd’s tentacles encircle her, cradle her, sooth her. Ti responded by uncurling and hugging Eddientis. Wide-eyed, Pheno stared as Ti buried her face in Eddientis’s containment field. He hated Eddientis in this moment, wanted to jam an asteroid shard into those big glassy eyes focused on Ti. Pheno wished he had let his friend die on that rooftop even as the wish horrified him.
“Well, this is certainly awkward for them.” Gallia, arms crossed, smirked next to Pheno.
“Show some compassion, Gallia. We just learned Ti’s home is in jeopardy,” said Pheno.
“Seriously? You’re singing that song now? I warned you before my last game,” said Gallia.
“What?” asked Pheno.
Ti jerked her head up. “You knew?”
“Of course, he knew. I told him to avoid your kind,” Gallia waved at Eddientis and Ti. “The Galactic Counsel ordered all ex-pats from the affected worlds into containment camps. The soldiers at your dorm, hello? I warned Pheno lest he be identified as a sympathizer.”
“Ti, I—wait!” Pheno reached for her, but he was too late. She was gone.
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