Space Junque

by L. K. Rigel

  "In the old stories, Durga was a goddess with ten arms who rode tigers into battle."

  The satisfaction on her face was priceless.

  Jake set the Junque for the Imperial station. "That's interesting hair for such a young girl. Does your matriarch approve of ingesting enhancements?"

  "I used to have brown hair," she said. "But it changed when I talked to Asherah."

  "Asherah?" The name sounded vaguely familiar.

  "The goddess of life and fertility."

  "Oh, that's nice." Shib, who were these people?

  Durga knitted her eyebrows, apparently not pleased with his lack of piety. "She told me to save Rani."

  "That was brave of you."

  "No, it wasn't. I knew I wouldn't die. Asherah says I will live a hundred and fifty years."

  A bright flash went off below, momentarily obscuring the view. Another nuke. In China this time.

  Durga stood on the chair and leaned over to the corner of the window, oblivious to the mushroom cloud. "There goes Vacation Station."

  Jake canceled the flight program and turned the Junque for a better view. The station was breached in several places where ships had collided against the hull. He scanned the bays for a place to pick up survivors.

  Two transports with sunflower logos rammed the station side-by-side and blew up on impact. Another bright light flashed east of the China strike, this one in New Korea.

  "Don't be afraid." Durga stood beside Jake's chair and patted his hand.

  Wonderful. He'd saved a band of religious nutjob little girls.

  "Did you see that?" Rani stuck her head in from the passenger cabin.

  "Which? The signs of nuclear Armageddon or the end of the V?"

  Rani slid into Tyler's chair and motioned for Durga to sit on her lap. Until now the girl had made a good show of bravery, but she seemed to welcome Rani's comforting hug. She rested her head on Rani's shoulder and let out a heavy sigh.

  Poor kid. She'd done some heavy lifting today, Jake thought. She might be a nutjob, but her goddess delusion had saved her and her precious matriarch and the other girls. Saved for what though?

  The V entered de-orbit, and flames consumed the structure as it plummeted through the atmosphere. Jake had to remind himself to breathe. He never liked the V, but he knew people who worked there.

  The bulk of the station crashed somewhere in Guangdong Province, sending up ash and fire as if a monstrous volcano had erupted. An eerie void separated the few ships that hadn't docked or crashed into the station. They drifted, most still intact and alive with nothing to lock onto.

  Jake could feel the panic setting in out there. "The I's defenses are solid. We need to get back now." He glanced down at the planet. Australia was coming up, but the cloud cover was too thick to see anything. He hoped it was cloud cover.

  "Go ahead and call her," Rani said. "It's worth the risk."

  "No, it's not."

  Magda was still alive or she wasn't. Knowing would change nothing. He couldn't even be sure she was in New Melbourne. If there were more DOGs out there, he didn't want them latching on to the Junque's communications signal.

  One more time, he set their course for the I.

  He wondered how the others were doing in the passenger cabin, but not enough to go back there and find out. Shibbing shibad, a cargo of children. Well, they would be taken care of at the Imperial station. There were hundreds of kids living in the workers' section.

  Maybe there was a child psychiatrist on board.

  "Why do you have this?" Durga traced the tattooed SJ on Rani's cheek.

  Rani squeezed the girl's fingers and kissed them with maternal sweetness. She would make a good mother -- not that she'd ever get a license. Even Mike couldn't fix that.

  "This is my mark," Rani said. "My sign to the world where my commitment lies. With my service to the Space Junque, I am complete. I need nothing more."

  "I don't know yet where my commitment lies."

  "That sounds serious from one so young." Jake gave the girl his charming twinkly smile to no effect. She stared at him dubiously then turned back to Rani.

  "Asherah will tell me. I have a mark too. Do you want to see?"

  She pulled her shirt sleeve down to expose a black widow spider tattooed over her left shoulder and upper arm, complete with hourglass. "Asherah gave it to me when she changed my hair."

  "Now that makes me mad," Jake said. "That's just abuse."

  "It's my totem," Durga said. "It makes me happy."

  A broken-off piece of a ship passed close to the window, going the wrong way to have come from the V. The audionav reported debris in the line of trajectory and said, "Acquisition target unavailable."

  "That's not good." Jake sent the docking data request again manually.

  "Shouldn't we be in visual range?" Rani pulled Durga's shirt back over the disturbing tattoo.

  "Maybe it was a mistake to keep the com turned off.” Once again, Jake switched to manual pilot and took the Junque out of the programmed flight path. He sent the data link request manually, with the sinking awareness that no answer would be forthcoming.

  In that moment, Jake understood what Rani had not yet grasped. The Imperial station was gone.

  Marked

  In a corridor that looked like every other corridor, Char heard a Ppod door slide shut behind her. She didn't know how she got there or even where "there" was. She pulled out the compad stuffed in her flight pants and keyed in com center. A lovely green light blinked on the wall twenty feet away.

  Images clung to her like a dream she couldn't shake. Jake. The woman with blood-red hair and fairies on her shoulders. Worse than removing a holofilm headset. After a holo, reality snapped back pretty much instantly. This was no dream, no holofilm. Reality wasn't waiting conveniently outside her head.

  She had spoken with god.

  A god. Goddess. She couldn't prove it, but she believed it. That's why it was called a delusion.

  Shouldn't she feel better? Comforted or some kind of crap like that? Asherah had given no comfort. The "revelation" was terrifying.

  The end was shibbing nigh.

  Soon you will meet your sister.

  Sky was definitely dead then, and Char was about to be. Maybe she should be comforted knowing that the afterlife indeed existed. Heaven or hell, here I come.

  A few more turns and she didn't need the lights to find her way to the deserted com center. Mike had left a note: No luck. Gone to use secure com in orbit runner. Back soon.

  How normal. A search for an emperor lost in a space battle. Nothing like what Char had to share. The gods are real, and one of them spoke to me.

  No. No. No. This had to be some kind of narcosis. She ran a cross-annex systems check, but it confirmed low ammonia and acetone levels. The oxygen mix throughout was optimal. Nothing to cause psychosis.

  A piece of debris hit the ceiling and bounced off like a bird flying into a window. She remembered something the goddess had said. Commanded, to be more precise. Open your eyes to the world below.

  The annex was dayside over North America, past the Sierras and close to the Mountain Zone. Not yet over the Garrick Sea. A few light clouds and a lot of smoke. Every urban center she could make out was burning.

  Smoke. Asherah had whined about the tragic lack of holy fire in the material world.

  Char searched the monitor table and desk drawers for candles, then the supply cabinet in the corner. No luck. She welled up with tears. The goddess would be so disappointed.

  Cripes, what was happening to her? She was a scientist. She wasn't going to start worshipping gods, cripes' sake.

  In the search for candles, she spotted the agronomist's shades behind his entertainment screen. The sleek design was solid in her hand, slightly heavier than she was used to. ISS issue, of course, a phoenix logo engraved on the sides.

  The shades molded automatically to fit. Colored lights sparkled in the air, and the word calibrated flashed in front of her, then disappeared. S
he had a clear line of sight, but when she moved the slider she lost her balance and fell against the table.

  She readjusted the magnification level and lay down on her back on the floor to solve the balance problem. Much better. Looking up at the ceiling was starting to hurt her neck.

  The shades' auto-acquire feature grabbed onto a partial sunflower logo on a drifting piece of hull. Ack. Char moved her head to break the grab and tried again. Come on, come on. Find the Space Junque.

  What was that Jake thing in the strawberries? Asherah had called it an Empani, one of Samael's glories. Char figured that Samael was another god, but what did it mean? That thing had looked and felt exactly like Jake. In its arms she'd felt loved, cherished, but it was a lie. Maybe that Samael god was interfering with Asherah by playing with Char's mind.

  The goddess had commanded Char to share the revelation. Ha. Share the hallucination, more like.

  She couldn't talk to Mike. He wasn't one to ponder mysteries. One time they'd all gone out, and after much food and wine the discussion took a philosophical turn. Why were we here, what happens when you die kind of stuff. When Sky asked Mike why he was so quiet, he said it was all boring and pointless.

  Char missed Sky. She wanted Jake.

  But she had Mike. The only person she might ever talk to again would surely think she was insane.

  The only one she ever talked to again -- or anything else.

  Creepy. Mike had been her sister's lover, but what would happen if he and Char were stuck here together for the rest of their short lives? She wasn't going to think about that. If the Space Junque was gone, then they had to find another shuttle capable of returning to the planet.

  To Corcovado, according to Asherah.

  The shades locked on another sunflower, this one whole. The ship it decorated was intact and moving. Char peeked over the shades and couldn't see the craft with her bare eyes. The data report in the shades' lower corner said the ship was forty-two minutes away. No immediate threat.

  She pressed the capture button and tried saving the data in the agronomist's compad, projecting the information onto its screen. Success. The compad absorbed the text and she touched the save button. It was her compad now. The poor agronomist had gone down to a conference in Redmond. He wouldn't be returning.

  She resumed the search through the debris. After three dead bodies she wanted to stop, but she and Mike needed to know what was out there.

  The shades found two ships stuck together like animals copulating in a wildlife documentary. Char's stomach turned as she focused a clearer picture. One had attacked the other, and looters in spacesuits were transferring booty into their open hold.

  That's why Mike worried about drawing attention to the annex.

  She turned her head. The device attempted to grab a few dissipating clouds, then shot all the way through to movement on the planet surface like brown flowing water topped with white foam. But that wasn't foam on water. The white was tip feathers of birds' wings.

  Raptors.

  She tinkered with the slider. A phalanx of gigantic bald eagles raced low along the ground in two-by-two formation approaching a cluster of trees. The pair at the head separated from the column. Each raptor was bigger than the Malibu.

  The lead birds dove into the trees, and animals streamed from cover in all directions. The eagles broke formation to scoop up their prey.

  Not animals. Human beings. Dangling from talons like rag dolls.

  Char tore the shades off and rubbed her eyes while her vision readjusted. Shibadeh. Enough for now. She fingered the half heart pendant. At least Sky never had to see this. Char stuck the compad in her pocket and headed out to find Mike.

  As she expected, he was in the docking bay sitting in the Mikemobile. It struck her that in his note he'd called it the orbit runner. Toning down his ego maybe.

  The bubble canopy was closed and she couldn't hear, but it looked like he was speaking with someone. He ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of frustration and popped the canopy. With athletic grace, he grabbed a handhold and swung himself down to the floor.

  He saw Char and started to wave, then gave her a quizzical look. When he got closer, she sensed that something had gone terribly wrong -- though what was left to go wrong?

  "It's a crazy time to start pharmaceuticals," he said.

  "Yeah, I'd say so." Cripes, what did that mean? "Who were you talking to?"

  "No one."

  He was lying, she was sure of it.

  He must have picked up her skepticism. He added, "I was using the subnet. It's ultra-encrypted. Tesla developed it to communicate outside the hearing of their corporate monitors. Not even Garrick knows about the subnet." He scoffed. "I might be the only one left who does. And now you."

  He sat down beside her. A worry line she'd never seen before made a groove between his eyebrows. His eyes were red. She was sure he'd been crying.

  "I was scanning the chatter on the surface." He reached for her hand. "Char, the Emperor is dead. The DOGs blew his shuttle out of the air before it even broke atmosphere."

  Did it matter? In a day or two, there might be no empire.

  "The entire official family was on board." His voice cracked, and like a forlorn child he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his head on her shoulder.

  "Oh, Mike. I'm sorry." She patted his back, embarrassed by her lack of sympathy. "There must have been people you cared about on that flight."

  Mike seemed to truly care about the Emperor, though Jake detested the guy.

  "It's worse than that, Char. The V has gone down just like the Imperial station."

  Jake. Char's heart turned to stone.

  "It went down over China. I haven't been able to find Jake or Rani. No signal from the Space Junque."

  Jake and Rani gone. And the Space Junque. They truly were alone and quite possibly marooned. Mike shuddered in her arms.

  "You told me you all grew up together,” she said.

  "Their mothers were Imperial concubines in New Melbourne. They lived in the same compound and hired my mother to tutor Jake and Rani. They were my only real family."

  "Was Rani born … like that?"

  "No. It happened when she was twelve. Her hair fell out and her eyes changed. We all tried to protect her, tried to keep the Emperor from learning that he'd fathered a mutant. But at court secrets are worth more than pure water. Someone told, hoping to gain favor."

  "Politics."

  "Of course then the rumors flew. Rani's mother must have slept with another man. She was a traitor. When the assassins came, Jake saved Rani, but…"

  "But what?"

  "They murdered Rani's mother. And mine."

  "Oh, Mike. I never knew." The hint of cold malice in Mike's voice was so faint, Char wondered if she imagined it. She smoothed the worry line between his eyebrows. "That's horrible."

  "She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A peasant in a knight's path."

  "Rani went into hiding?"

  "In Reynaldo's household, if you can believe it. His wife was alive then. Years later, when the Emperor was in Corcovado, he saw that Rani hadn't gone ghost and she was gorgeous. I arranged for him to acknowledge her."

  "Mike, that's wonderful."

  "It was something I could do. I'm not a brave man, Char, but I'm great with a legal clause. It solved two problems. First, the Emperor is -- was a petty man and afraid of his corporate masters. Especially Garrick. But he wasn't cruel. He never wanted Rani killed -- or anyone."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  "Second, this was a great coup for him as far as mutant relations. For the first time, there was official acknowledgement that not all mutation ends in ghosting."

  Mike looked up at Char with a mock sad expression. "I'm hurt that you don't remember. Ah, that's right. You don't pay attention to politics. You thought I was a low-level clerk in Identifications."

  "Oh, no. Mid-level, at least."

  It felt good to laugh. Mike wasn't so bad.
He was a hero, in his way.

  He sat up. As they disentangled from each other, somehow his lips brushed against her cheek. She meant to turn her face the other away, but her lips accidentally touched his lips. They froze in that position for a moment, then he really kissed her.

  She didn't stop him.

  He wrapped his arms around her. Char knew his muscles were enhanced, but the massive embrace felt wonderful all the same. "Sky --"

  What? "Oh, shib!" What was she doing? She extracted herself and ran for the corridor.

  "Wait! I was going to say Sky would have been happy for us!"

  She probably would have been, but that didn't matter. This was all wrong.

  Mike nearly caught up with her when the docking alarm went off. The door between control room and airlock closed and the docking bay door cracked open.

  "DOGs!" Char whirled around to face the docking bay. "Get to the blankets."

  It was too late. They should have been watching the control console. The docking bay was already full open, and a shuttle zipped in and landed neatly beside the Mikemobile.

  "Mike, stop!" Char burst out laughing and crying at the same time. She pulled Mike away from the controls. "It's them. It's the Space Junque."

  Surely the orbital runner hadn't made so much noise. But then the Mikemobile was tiny compared to Jake's Junque. At last the all-clear light signaled that there was sufficient air, and the galley lift descended from the cockpit.

  Why had she kissed Mike? He stood close behind her. She could feel him watching her watch the Junque.

  At the first glimpse of Jake's boots, she let out a relieved sigh. This was no apparition. He was alive and human, holding onto the hand of a child. He gave Char an odd look, then smiled and shook his head as if she'd done something strange.

  She thought he was going to jump down before the platform landed and come to her, but his eyes dulled and he held back. At the same time, she felt Mike's hand on her shoulder. Jake hit the knob on the galley lift that released the cargo bay's loading ramp. He didn't see her step away from Mike's touch.

  The girl had blood-red hair with unnatural silver blazes at her temples. Char felt queasy. She knew that color. The girl's eyes lit up. She leapt off the platform. "My sister!" In raptures, she ran and threw her arms around Char's waist.