Musketeer Space

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “Yes,” said Dana. “Whatever you’ve got. I’ll take it.”

  “Fine. Years ago, not long after the war when I still lived on Valour, I was – in a bad way. A drunk, for the most part, and don’t interrupt to tell me what a drunk I am now.”

  “I didn’t say a word,” she murmured.

  “Worse than now, if you can imagine it. I travelled halfway around the damned planet to get away. Bought a bar in the middle of nowhere on the side of a fucking mountain, and I climbed so far inside a bottle that I couldn’t even remember my name. Which was fine, because I’d left that behind with everything else.”

  Athos was silent for a while, his fingers dancing across the dashboard as he made minute manual adjustments. He used his hands more than any other pilot Dana knew. Almost as if he didn’t trust his brain.

  After a few minutes of concentration he returned to his story. “A woman walked into the bar, and I knew she was a spy. The war was over, but the Sun-kissed continued to infiltrate the solar system with covert agents. I had – personal experience at recognising them. I was less than impressed with how the local militia handled that first instance, so after that I contacted the Fleet directly when I had useful information.”

  “Treville?” Dana asked in a low voice.

  Athos smiled briefly, and she saw the warmth in his eyes. “Treville. I forwarded information directly to her over the next couple of years. It’s amazing what you can learn in a bar, especially one at the crossroads of several travel routes. It was quite a game – I started drinking less and listening more. Then one day, a local criminal gang who had been profiting from Sun-kissed kickbacks figured out what I was doing.”

  Dana winced.

  Athos nodded. “I was captured, and carted halfway up that damned mountain so they could decide whether they were going to ransom me or make me disappear. I convinced them that I was worthless.”

  Dana gave him a dirty look. “Did you have a death wish?”

  “Something like that. I certainly had no desire to reveal who I used to be. There was no one to miss me. The thought of disappearing so thoroughly was – something of a relief.”

  He did not look at her. Dana did not dare try to meet his eyes, and not only because they might end up crashing into an asteroid. Athos had never revealed so much of himself before, and she did not want it to stop. “What happened? Obviously you survived.”

  “The Musketeers happened,” Athos said flatly. “Two darts arrived in the nick of time. My abductors were arrested, and taken to Paris Satellite for questioning. I wasn’t given a lot of choice in coming along. My rescuers patched me up, fed me, talked nonstop until I enlisted formally, and I haven’t got rid of them since.” He offered Dana a brief, biting grin. “It’s going to take more than a compromised solarcrawler and a handful of Sabres to get Porthos and Aramis off my back, believe me.”

  Dana considered his story in silence. It was comforting to hear his confidence in their friends. More than that – it meant something that he had been willing to share these pieces of his history.

  “Isn’t there a mountain on Valour called Athos?” she said finally, picking up on a detail of the story that he might not have wanted her to notice.

  “It’s possible,” he grunted.

  “You named yourself after a mountain?” She turned to him, alight with curiosity. “What was your name before?”

  But that was one question too many, and she saw his face close over. “Story time is over, D’Artagnan.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Life is unfair.”

  She considered pouting, but that would just annoy both of them. “How long until we reach Valour?”

  “We should pass Meung Station in an hour or so. Entering Valour atmosphere shortly after that, if we make it in one piece.”

  She looked at him in alarm. “Why wouldn’t we make it in one piece?”

  “Largely because of the six pursuit ships that have been gaining on us for a while now. We also have to consider the possibility that there might be more lying in wait for us, when we reach the planet.”

  “Porthos and Aramis really aren’t the ones I should be worried about, are they?”

  “Nope.”

  Grimaud woke up about twenty minutes out from Meung Station, when Athos slowed the ship down for planetary approach. She coughed and shifted uncomfortably in her harness.

  “Stay where you are,” Athos barked at Dana, but she slipped her harness and went to check on Grimaud, taking her a flask of water.

  “How do you feel, engie?”

  Grimaud swallowed down some water with shaky lips, her reflexes slower than usual. “Like someone shot me.”

  “They’re vile, those Sabres!” Athos called from the front of the flight deck. “Can’t trust them an inch.”

  Dana gave him a dirty look. “You’re not going to wriggle out of it that easily.”

  “You don’t have to live with her!” he protested.

  Dana continued to glare at his back. He gave in after thirty seconds of studied silence.

  “Oh, fine. Grimaud, best of engies, you were caught in a friendly fire of pearl stunners. I will make it up to you, if we survive this. Speaking of which - D’Artagnan, get the fuck back into a harness before I flip you through the viewscreen. Things are about to get bumpy.”

  Dana had barely made it back to her seat before the Parry-Riposte jolted violently. Athos spun them off into a hard spin, then straightened them. “What is it?” she asked, fastening the last snaps of her harness.

  “Those pursuit ships I mentioned some time ago ago? The ones that have been closing in over the last couple of hours but haven’t otherwise given us any trouble?”

  Bright flashes of laser light exploded across the right side of the view screen, and the Parry-Riposte shuddered around them.

  “I get it,” Dana said breathlessly. “Trouble.”

  Three shots rang across the sky in quick succession; Athos managed to get the dart under two of them, but the third skimmed the hull with a vibration that made Dana’s teeth rattle.

  Athos swore twice. “Damage?”

  Dana thought at first that he was talking to her, but Grimaud rapped out specs from behind them and she realised that the engie had access to a diagnostics panel from the rear seat.

  There was one here, as well, right by Dana’s hand. She called it up without asking permission. “Another three pursuit ships approaching from behind Meung Station.”

  “Of course there are,” Athos bit out. He wiped something from the other side of his face and she saw a spatter of blood on his hand. Was that coming from his ear? “We know what they’re after. We’ve got to get you down to that planet.”

  Another burst of light crossed Dana’s field of vision, but Athos slung the ship through a series of fast manoeuvres, avoiding the blast. “If we get close enough to the station, they’ll stop shooting,” he said. “There are three cathedrals on Meung, and twelve more across the other orbital stations and satellites.”

  “We still have to lose them.”

  “That I can do.”

  Dana stared at the blood on his hand. “Athos… how deeply are you tapped into this ship?” It was different for different pilots and ship combinations. The better a pilot, the longer they had been flying the same ship, the more intimately woven their brain was into the controls. The more likely they were to take actual damage when their ship did.

  “It’s just flashburn,” he said dismissively.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Grimaud cleared her throat, and said nothing. The nothing she said was big enough to fill the flight deck.

  Dana concentrated on the pursuit ships: the pattern they made across the diagnostics panel. Another wave of blasts came at them, from two different angles. Athos ducked and rolled the dart, but he shuddered under them with the force of another impact.

  “The good news is they’re not trying to destroy us,” Athos said under his breath. His eyes were glas
sy with pain. “Orders to take us alive, or we’d be in pieces already. Hold on to something, both of you.” The Parry-Riposte took on a turn of speed that Dana didn’t know this generation of dart was capable of. They weaved around the pursuit ships and skimmed directly under Meung Station, then punched directly into Valour space, breaking through the atmosphere with a blinding flash of light.

  “It rains a lot on Valour,” said Dana, using the diagnostics panel to search their region more widely.

  “That’s what they say,” said Athos flatly, his hands and eyes busy on the controls.

  “So,” she said, navigating a fast route and skimming the panel over to his central screen. “Cloud cover. Lots of it. Get in.”

  He gave her a biting smile, and followed the route she had given.

  “We’re draining the power spheres. Ten more minutes of this speed and we’re in real trouble,” Grimaud warned.

  “I know,” Athos told her. “We’ve got other problems. D’Artagnan, ever flown doubles before?”

  “Sure, once or twice in training,” Dana said without thinking. And then – “What?” He couldn’t be serious.

  “I wouldn’t ask,” he said, and for the first time she realised that there was an uneven quality to his voice that had nothing to do with the vibrations of the damaged ship around them. “But there’s a good chance I’m going to lose consciousness in the next five minutes. Care to hop aboard?”

  Doubling was a dangerous technique, only hauled out in training and dire emergencies. Having a second pilot keyed directly into the ship provided backup, yes, and in the best cases a merging of skills. But it meant merging thoughts, too, and it had never occurred to Dana in a million years that Athos of all people would be willing to open himself up like that.

  Bloody hell. He must be dying.

  “Come on, D’Artagnan,” Athos roared, eyes fixed firmly ahead. “I can use Grimaud if I have to, but you’re the better pilot. Make a decision.”

  “I will. Of course I will.” Dana glanced back, but Grimaud was already in motion, dragging a secondary helm and cables out of a panel in the side of the ship.

  Dana had doubled with her mother, once or twice, before she was old enough to fly solo. It had been a strange, dissociative experience, to touch the mind and memories of a woman she thought she knew better than anyone. The first time she did it, her mind was assaulted by the memories of Mama’s first battle. It had taken years before she could go near a spaceship helm without thinking of corpses floating in space.

  This helm fitted snugly over her head, and the snap of the cables plugging into the base of her neck felt like home.

  “Why is this affecting you so badly?” she asked Athos. There was something about this that didn’t add up.

  “He’s on nexus,” said Grimaud, leaning around Dana’s chest to make the last few connections.

  Dana blinked. Nexus was the most powerful of the psychic drugs – it was used for gaming and other civilian cocktails most of the time because only a complete idiot would use it as a pilot drug. It was too bloody strong. “All the time?” she demanded. “Why?”

  “Because I drink too much,” Athos muttered. “There comes a time when all the Sobriety patches in the world don’t stop your hands shaking at the helm and harness.”

  “Fuck,” Dana breathed. That meant he wasn’t just directly wired into the dart. Athos’ mind was wrapped in and around the Parry-Riposte. Every shot on target was hitting his system directly. She remembered the pain of the flashburn she had experienced during the duel with Rosnay Cho. It had been nearly unbearable, and that didn’t even involve real ships.

  “Hence the need for a co-pilot right now. Which, by the way, is one of the most humiliating requests I have ever had to make.” Athos wasn’t looking at her. His eyes and hands were all over the controls. Not a tremor in sight.

  She wouldn’t have known he was in trouble until the last moment, not if he hadn’t confessed. Dana was used to thinking of Athos as invulnerable.

  “I reserve the right to yell at you once we’re on the ground,” she said, shrugging her shoulders into the harness and making a mental check as the cables and connections stung her synapses. There he was, the Parry-Riposte, ready and waiting for her. “Ten minutes should do it. After that we’ll never mention it again. Grimaud, I hope there’s another ampoule of nexus left.”

  “No,” Athos snapped. “You don’t need it.”

  “We’ve never practiced this together, Athos, this isn’t fencing footwork,” Dana snarled back at him. “Do you really think we’re going to hold it together raw? I’d prefer a controlled dose of something milder like Flight but something tells me you don’t have it in stock.”

  Grimaud already had the ampoule out, which she now placed on Dana’s tongue.

  She hadn’t taken psychic drugs since Meung Station. What goes around comes around. As the nexus swamped her system, Dana wondered if Rosnay Cho was captaining one of those pursuit ships.

  “Now,” she said quietly. “Let’s do this.”

  Grimaud made the final connection, and the Parry-Riposte reached out to Dana, pulling her roughly into the mind of the ship.

  Thoughts and memories flooded her, a jumble of dream images and impulses. Dana clawed through it all, resisting the urge to stop and sift through what belonged to Athos and what was her own. She had a ship to save.

  She was the ship. Dana’s mind reached out to her co-pilot, and she felt his thoughts brushing hesitantly against her.

  The screens filled suddenly with a fierce, blinding purple light, and Dana felt her tenuous connection to the ship and Athos shatter into a million pieces.

  21

  Crashing and Burning

  They were falling. Of all the things you could possibly do with a spaceship, falling had to be one of the worst.

  Dana could not move. Her brain was swallowed up by the Parry-Riposte, and he was damaged in so many places. Dana’s thoughts were consumed by it: the cracking of the hull, the spark of broken wires, the painful burn of the defence shield as the last precious layer peeled away from the hull.

  This was not good.

  She could not find Athos. Had he already lost consciousness? If she reached out a hand or opened her eyes then she would see him beside her, but she wasn’t willing to lose her cerebral connection to the Parry-Riposte to confirm what she already knew.

  He was there. But he wasn’t here.

  There was no cheerful song of flight and joy coming from the Parry-Riposte. Even the ship himself was frozen in fear. Dana reached out with her thoughts, remembering the first time she had ever piloted a ship in space on her own, not piggy-backing on the flight controls of her mother. She was fourteen, and invincible.

  From that moment on, she had never wanted anything but flying spaceships.

  The memory buoyed her, kept her upright while she reached deeper into the ship, searching for his power spheres, his thrusters, anything to stop this horrible, stomach-churning descent.

  Her memory of first flight collided with another, a memory of hands on the helm and a screen full of stars, and a first ship, a ship she had never flown before, patient and loving under her hands.

  It wasn’t her memory.

  “Athos,” she breathed, and pressed in deeper. His memory was so close to hers – first flight, the sickening joy of it, the knowledge that nothing else in life would ever be quite this good or simple or right.

  In the real world, on the flight deck of the Parry-Riposte, she felt Athos’ boot nudge against hers.

  Footwork, Dana thought, wanting to laugh hysterically. That was what they needed after all. A routine to perform in unison until they became properly aligned.

  But there wasn’t time for that, because they were falling out of the sky.

  She pushed her memory fiercely against his, smashing them together. Her thoughts fractured at the pressure, one memory bleeding into another. Other data filled her head, shattered images of space and ship and thrust and metal. Memories bro
ke into pieces and reconnected. She couldn’t tell where she ended and Athos began.

  Bare feet, walking across polished floorboards. She was stupidly in love with those feet. Who did they belong to?

  They reached out together, Dana and Athos as a unit. Holding together they drew the ship upwards, out of its sheer drop. Up and up, through the blueness and into the comfort of grey.

  -Cloud cover again?- she asked inside their heads, not wanting to unsettle the balance by speaking aloud in the real world.

  -We’re over the ocean- he sent back. -Could put her down here but it won’t help your mission. Need to head for Castellion, get as close to Buckingham as possible before we-

  -Land?-

  -Crash.-

  -Such an optimist.-

  -The cloud should affect their instruments-

  -And ours. I can’t see a damned thing. The pursuit ships-

  -We haven’t lost them yet-

  They flew straight and even, a perfect motion of speed and grace. Everything was going to be all right, if they could fly like this for long enough.

  Dana opened her eyes. The Parry-Riposte settled calmly in the back of her head as if this was normal. She finally felt stable enough to check for herself, via the physical screen.

  Athos’ eyes were open as well. He had a savage grin across his face, and blood running from his nose. “Catch me if you can,” he said aloud.

  They darted from cloud to cloud, surfing the sky with occasional bursts of speed followed by long slow glides that used almost no power at all.

  “Here,” Athos breathed. “Like this.” A stab of pain roiled through him and the ship fell from his grasp.

  Dana caught it, taking the lead, skimming the ship along the inner edge of the cloud. Navigation. That was what she was here for. Being his double meant more than steering the ship. “Still with me?” she murmured.

  She felt a warm glow inside her head, like a handshake or a formal salute before the fencing began.

  They didn’t speak after that, but took turns handing the ship back and forth between them, taking point and then falling back. It was like a game, if she pretended she wasn’t aware he was badly hurt. They were going to have to do something about that.