by Tim Pratt
“A bohemian flavor?”
“If you say so. I don’t know who the bohemians were or what they were like. But it’s a place for experiments, and big ideas, and beauty for its own sake. The place should be interesting, at least compared to the conservatism of the Jovian Imperative.” She paused. “Do you want to stay on the planet, while the crew and I go do our investigatory thing?”
Elena scowled at Callie from her own tangle of straps. “Absolutely not. Maybe when I thought it was just a corporate job, but after what Lantern said about losing contact with their sect out here – what if the Axiom is involved?”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence. Whoever took out the surveyors, whether they’re pirates or freelancers or fixers from a rival corporation, could have stumbled on the truth-tellers and killed them too.”
Elena shook her head. “Come on. The entire pirate fleet from Glauketas attacked a truth-teller space station and couldn’t take it down. They got massacred, because they were up against Axiom tech. No wildcat miners are going to fare any better.”
Callie nodded. She’d come to the same conclusion. “You’re right. I just hate seeing you in danger.”
Elena growled at that. “I hate seeing you in danger too, but I’d rather be by your side than sitting down some gravity well, waiting for word. People have disappeared out there. There’s devouring darkness. If you’re going to disappear, I want to disappear with you. Besides, you don’t object to Drake or Janice or Ashok or Lantern or Stephen going along with you into whatever terrifying hall of endless rending awaits us out there.”
Callie sighed. “Yes, but they knew what they were signing up for, more or less, when they joined the crew. And they’re trained for this kind of work, at least to the extent that anyone can be. You didn’t choose this life, though. You were supposed to be starting human colonies on faraway worlds, ensuring the survival of the species, not hunting down villains in the deep black.”
“I am ensuring the survival of the species. Just with more punching and less lab work. I’ve had some on-the-job training too, as you know. You don’t think I have anything to offer? I’m a good medic – I don’t have Stephen’s surgical expertise, I know, but I took two years of medical training, and I was going to be the closest thing to a doctor on our colony world. I’m an asset.”
Callie held up her hands. “You don’t have to convince me. I’ve seen you in action. You’re absolutely useful! All I’m saying is – you don’t work for me, unlike the rest of the crew. You’re a volunteer, and that gives you the option to sit this one out. If you want to take part, though… I’m going to cut you in. Put you on the payroll. You can have a ten percent stake in the Machedo Corporation, same as the rest of the crew. I get more, but all the ship’s repairs and upkeep come out of my end.”
Elena stared at her. “I was prepared to be super mad at you for thinking I was incapable, or for trying to protect me when I don’t need protecting, and then you go and say just exactly the right thing. Really? You want me on your crew? This isn’t just because you love me and everything?”
“I never invited Michael to join my crew, and I was married to him. Yes, I want you. You are an asset, and you deserve recompense.”
“Then I accept. Do I get a title? Can I be a boatswain? I bet I could swain a boat.”
“You can be the ship’s scientist, how about that? We could use one, with all the weird shit we’re discovering lately, and, as Ashok always reminds me, he’s an engineer, not a scientist. Since I know you like keeping busy, you can also be assistant medical officer, and help out Stephen as needed.”
Elena beamed. “I like it. Does this mean I have to take orders from you?”
“Only when you’re on duty, and only in ship-related matters. I will try not to abuse my authority otherwise.”
“Do I get to boss anybody else around?”
“You do not. You listen to me, and then you listen to Stephen, and otherwise, you listen to yourself.”
“Hmm. Does this mean we can’t play ‘rear admiral and insubordinate captain’ any more? I guess it could be weird since I’m in your actual chain of command.”
“Maybe it would just add verisimilitude. This isn’t anybody’s navy, though. We’re a private vessel with civilian positions, not military ranks. I thought you liked playing pirate and plucky captive better anyway?”
Elena gave her a sloppy salute. “As long as there’s a strong narrative, I’m pretty flexible.”
“I have noticed that about you,” Callie said.
Chapter 11
“All set?” Ashok said.
Elena nodded. “Thanks for doing this.”
Ashok shrugged. “We’ve got some downtime before we hit the planet, and I find the process interesting. Are you sure you’re ready, though?”
“I am. Why do you ask?”
“Because your heartbeat is very thumpy and your pupils are doing some stuff pupils do when the people those pupils are attached to get nervous, and also you’re sweaty,” Ashok said. “Simulated sweaty, but your avatar is mimicking real physiological responses right now, so.”
She sighed. “Of course I’m nervous, but that doesn’t mean I’m not ready. Stephen said I shouldn’t get my hopes up, that the drug therapies are still in progress, but we may be too busy to run these tests once we reach the planet, and I’d like to see if there’s any improvement. I can’t help but be worried and hopeful all at once.”
“Gotcha.” Ashok looked around. “Being in this homebrew Glauketas simulator is weird. Usually when I plug into Hypnos I’m in a giant mech suit punching planet-eating space leviathans.”
“Just be yourself,” Elena said.
“Every minute of every day,” Ashok said cheerfully. “OK, I’m waking Sebastien up.” Ashok drew his fingertip across the surface of a handheld terminal, easing back on the levels of sedation that kept Sebastien in his induced coma. A moment later his eyes fluttered, and Sebastien turned his head toward Elena. She braced herself for an attack. Instead, a lazy smile bloomed on his face. “Elena?”
Her heart eased in her chest, like a fist unclenching. “I’m here, Sebastien.”
“I… Are we there? Did we arrive, at the colony world?”
Elena glanced at Ashok. He shrugged. “Stephen said there might be some memory loss. His brain’s been through a lot.”
Sebastien started to sit up, then groaned, touching his temple. “Was I injured? What happened?”
“We were awakened from cryo-sleep early, Sebastien.” Elena took his hand. “Do you remember? We encountered an alien space station? It seized our ship, pulled us on board?”
He frowned. “I remember waking up, maybe? Arguing with Robin and Hans and Ibn, seeing something on the viewscreen. Something big, all strange angles…”
“That’s right. The station captured us, and started to cut open the Anjou. There were machines, security devices, and the crew was scattered for a while.”
He grimaced. “I don’t remember that at all. My last clear memories are from launch day, Hans shouting ‘Nighty night!’ and Ibn muttering something about, ‘In this sleep, what dreams may come.’ Then I got into the cryo-sleep pod, and I might have dreamed? Or were those flashes of the station, the… metal spiders? Those can’t be real.”
“They were real. They were alien.”
He shook his head. “Aliens. There are aliens? Are they… friendly?”
Elena almost smiled. “I wouldn’t say friendly. But the aliens weren’t at home – the station was abandoned. The automated systems were still active, though. The station thought our ship was broken and in need of repair. The ship thought we were broken and in need of repair. You…” She tried to think of how to explain it. For accuracy she should say something like:
You were attacked by a robot spider that stuck electrodes and injected nanotechnology into your gray matter and tried to transform you into a compliant slave, but because the technology was made to mind-control a different species of aliens that we call Liars, i
t didn’t work properly on your human physiology, and instead of making you into a servant, the implants made you into a psychopath, and then you decided to hijack the station’s offensive capabilities to build and launch a fleet of automated warships that would enable you to take over the galaxy, oh and also you kidnapped me because despite having your brain scrambled you decided you were in love with me, and you might have succeeded in your mad plan of conquest if I hadn’t taken advantage of your attempt to kiss me by punching you in the head while wearing basically a set of electrified brass knuckles –
“You got a head injury,” Ashok said.
Elena nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”
Sebastien’s gaze slowly tracked over to Ashok, and his eyes widened. “You… You must have been hurt terribly. Was it the aliens?”
Ashok shook his armored head, then thumped some of the metal on his skull with the manipulator cluster at the end of his prosthetic arm. “Oh, you mean the metal plates and the augmented limbs and all that? Nah. These upgrades were collected painstakingly and with great care over time, and only a few of them were due to grievous catastrophic injury. Most of them I just have because they’re more useful than whatever I was born with. I’m Ashok, by the way – part of the crew that rescued you guys off that alien space station. While you were snoozing in cryo-sleep for all those centuries, humanity was keeping busy. We’ve upgraded and expanded and spread through thirty colony systems in the galaxy. The future is a wonderful place. You’re gonna love it.” He grinned.
“But our mission,” Sebastien murmured. “Everything we trained for…” Elena squeezed his hand. She sympathized. It was a lot to take in. Their mission had been launched as a desperate bid for survival by a species on the brink of extinction, and then he’d slept through the human galactic renaissance. “It’s good humanity didn’t go extinct, at least,” he said. “However they may have… changed.”
“Ashok is not entirely typical,” Elena said.
“I’m an early adopter,” Ashok said. “Majorly into radical self-improvement. Most people are too timid to really seize all the technological advances the modern world has to offer.”
“Not everyone sticks a computer directly into their face, he means,” Elena said.
“Modern world,” Sebastien said. “How long were we frozen?”
“About five hundred years,” Elena said. “Welcome to the twenty-seventh century.”
Sebastien sat up, more successfully this time, the straps around his legs holding him to the table so he wouldn’t float away. “Where are we now? Is this a ship?”
“An asteroid,” Ashok said. Of course, in reality they were on the White Raven in an entirely different star system, but they hadn’t seen any reason to change the simulated setting from the last time they tried to wake Sebastien up. “Big one, a real lumpy space potato. Started out as a mining operation, and then they smoothed the tunnels down and cleaned it up and turned it into a habitat. It’s called Glauketas.”
Sebastien looked at Elena. “Does everyone live on asteroids? Are we the only ones here?”
“People live all sorts of places. Right now the only people here are you, me, , and the crew of the ship that saved us – Ashok, Callie, Stephen–”
“What about our crew?”
“Ibn, Uzoma, and Robin are all right. I’m afraid Hans didn’t make it off the alien station. It… was a very dangerous place.”
Sebastien winced. “Hans. I can’t believe it. I always thought he was too mean to die. So, we’re on an asteroid, but – where? Gliese 3293 C?”
Their original destination – and the colony world where Robin and Ibn were going right at that moment, amusingly enough. All that was too much to get into now, though. Time enough for full disclosures later, if Sebastien proved cured. “No. Glauketas is in Earth’s solar system, way out near the orbit of Neptune.”
“How did we get… no, never mind. I won’t ask you to catch me up on several centuries of old news. I will ask if I can have some water, though?”
Ashok said, “Sure thing.”
“Are you my attending physician, Ashok?”
“Nah, I mostly fix the broken machines, not people. Stephen Baros is the station’s doctor, but I’ve been helping him out.”
Ashok didn’t mention that Stephen had declined to take part in this test, after being murdered in the last one. Ashok passed Sebastien a bulb of water, who sucked it down greedily, then plucked at the straps holding him down. “Can I walk? Well, not walk, but, ah… float around?” He waved his arms vaguely. They’d opted not to have gravity turned on in this simulated Glauketas, because it would lead to questions about the nature of reality that wouldn’t be diagnostically useful.
“You can try.” Elena and Ashok loosened the straps around Sebastien’s legs, and he turned gently on the bed, stretching out his limbs, pointing his toes. He was entirely unselfconscious about wearing only a small pair of undershorts, a quality Elena remembered from training with him for their voyage – he would always wander out of the shower smiling and completely oblivious to the fact that no one else strolled around naked, until Hans barked at him to cover up, this wasn’t a damned naturist colony. Sebastien had murmured something about cultural differences and mostly remembered to wear a robe after that, though it wasn’t always fastened very tightly. Elena tried not to let her eyes linger on the planes of his body. The emotional parts of her infatuation with him had been completely burned out by his homicidal behavior on the Axiom station, but apparently her lust remained. Oh well. Callie probably wouldn’t fault her for looking, though she might question her taste.
“Give me the grand tour?” Sebastien said, and took her hand.
“As soon as you put some clothes on,” she said, taking her hand back.
They floated through the corridors of Glauketas station, perfectly replicated in the simulation. (Elena actually found herself homesick for the place. The White Raven was rather cramped by comparison, if nicer overall.) The passages were old mining tunnels, reinforced with metal in some places, still exposed bare rock in others, and tall and wide enough to accommodate elephant-sized mining drones. The pirates who’d lived here had carved, cut, and blasted living quarters, storage areas, recreation, and other facilities as needed. The new inhabitants were still inventorying the mishmash of equipment left behind by first miners and later pirates. Elena pointed out some of the highlights as he walked: the gym, with its low-gravity resistance equipment; the cargo bays, full of as-yet-unsorted pillage the pirates had acquired; the machine shop, which Ashok had made his own, with every wall covered in magnetic clamps and cargo netting to keep his tools in place; the room full of strap-covered chairs and Hypnos diadems (which she vaguely described as “entertainment centers”), and the galley. She started daydreaming about which room he could stay in when they got home, if he was really better now, as he seemed.
She drifted into that gleaming stainless-steel-and-tile space and did a little spin, gesturing all around. “The galley – which I say should be called a kitchen, because this isn’t a ship, but tell that to a bunch of people who spend all their time on space boats – is amazingly well kitted out. It’s mostly food warmers and microwaves, like you’d expect, but there are weird pressure cookers and things too, and apparently a good chef can reproduce just about any dish you could get someplace that has gravity and open flames. You’re a pretty good cook, right? I remember you talking about it during training.”
“I dabble,” he said, in the way that means, My skills are exceptional, but I am modest, and also sexy.
“The coffee is good, too. The pirates hit some kind of gourmet food shipment and got heaps of beans.”
“Oh, coffee. I didn’t even dare to dream.” Elena took the hint and filled a couple of bulbs from the dispenser, flicking one to spin toward him. He deftly caught the bulb, gave it a suck, and widened his eyes. “This… is the best coffee I’ve ever had. And I’m not just saying that because I haven’t had any at all in five hundred year
s.”
Elena sipped hers and nodded. It tasted of chocolate and cherries. “It really is.” Simulated food was always the best.
“This really used to be a pirate base?”
She nodded. “We repurposed it.” They’d actually won it by right of conquest, but that was a long story.
“Huh. Actual space pirates.”
“Oh yes. We’re in a sort of lawless region here, beyond the jurisdictional reach of the Jovian Imperative – that’s the major polity in the area – but close enough to zip out and hit the shipping lanes.”
He shook his head. “Pirates. I bet they left a lot of weapons lying around, huh?”
Was his tone nonchalant, or just faux-nonchalant? “What, like cutlasses and cannons? Grapeshot?”
“Or the higher-tech equivalent, I guess.”
She sipped her coffee before answering. Sebastien had a curious mind, that was all. “Sure. They left a few things behind, and there’s an armory, but the weapons weren’t well maintained, and most of it’s junk. The pirates had their best weapons on their ships, and Callie destroyed those.”
“Ah, the famous captain. Is she ferocious?” He mimed clawing and growling, like a tiger. Or a housecat. Elena wanted to kick him in the shin, but that would send them both spinning away in the null gravity.
She settled for a shrug. “I guess she can be, if you’re on the wrong side of her. She’s the reason I’m alive, and you’re alive, and Ibn and Uzoma and Robin too. We’d all be dead if she hadn’t rescued us.”
“Shame she couldn’t save Hans. But nobody’s perfect.” He sipped meditatively. “I suppose I’m in this Callie’s debt, then. I should thank her. Where is she – and everyone else, for that matter?”
“They went on a supply run. There’s no one on the base but me and Ashok right now.”