Orion Lost

by Alastair Chisholm

  Ship spoke up. “The second Gizmo was on the hull surface during Jump and deactivated. It attached itself to the hull and is still attached. It is activating now.”

  A screen showed the hull outside. The crippled Gizmo was clinging tightly to an external handle with its one good arm, its damaged legs bouncing gently in the almost non-existent gravity. It seemed to Beth that its metal face held a look of grim defiance.

  “Gizmo Two, you star!” she said, smiling. Its determination made her feel more optimistic. “You need your own name. I’m think I’m going to call you … Lucky.”

  She took a deep breath. “Right. Let’s see what’s out there.”

  Lucille was still quiet. She sat, staring at the screen in front of her as if she could make it change by force of will. Beth rested one hand on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s OK, Lucy,” she said gently. “Pick us a new route. Work out how to get us away. There’s no one here for now; we can repair some emitters. It’ll be all right.”

  Beth gave her orders. Arnold sent Stumpy on to the hull to join Lucky, and the two Gizmos continued adjusting the emitters. Mikkel scanned the local area for threats, and the others studied and began repairing the recent damage, and only then did Beth stop to think about the Scraper captain.

  The whole thing had been bizarre. Surely that wasn’t typical Scraper behaviour? And Murdoch hadn’t struck her as a typical Scraper captain, either. She really seemed as if she was looking for something in particular, not just pillaging. And she’d known the Orion already, and its captain…

  Beth thought about the evidence of attack they’d found on the hull of the Orion. What had they missed, during their Sleep? What had happened, and why?

  It was the next day before they discovered they weren’t alone.

  They were back on the bridge after their morning rounds. Now they stood at Mikkel’s console, looking at the asteroid debris on his screen.

  “It looks like it was caused by a smash with a ship,” he said. “Maybe it Jumped straight into the asteroid field. Just bad luck. Here.”

  He zoomed in on one area. There, quite small, in between the broken pieces of a larger vessel, was something that looked oddly like a metallic squid. It was about twenty metres long; one half – the front half, Beth supposed – roughly cone-shaped, the other split into tendrils that floated behind. Its hull was faintly fluorescent and seemed to shimmer. Along the top a series of triangular sails stuck out like fins. Three of the larger sails seemed to have been flattened against the hull.

  “Videshi,” breathed Arnold.

  Lucille stuffed her hand over her mouth.

  Mikkel nodded. “We’ve seen this class of ship before,” he said quietly. “We don’t know what they’re for. They’re pretty weak. You tend to see them alongside the really big ones, so we think they might be shuttlecraft.”

  “Is it abandoned?” asked Beth.

  “I thought so at first,” said Mikkel. “But if you watch it for long enough… There, did you see?”

  Beth nodded. Just for a moment one of the tendrils had flicked and then stopped.

  “Can we destroy it?” asked Vihaan.

  Mikkel looked surprised. “What?”

  “Can we destroy it? Can we blow it up? Is it vulnerable? Arnold, do you know?”

  “Uh…” Arnold frowned. “Maybe. The big ones are pretty much indestructible, but I think these little guys aren’t as strong. We could fire a missile at it.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Beth, “They haven’t done anything—”

  “They’re hiding in this debris waiting for us and they’ve been spying on us for nearly a day,” said Vihaan. “And when they Jump, they’re going to bring back others. We should destroy them now, so they can’t do that.”

  “Yeah, but you’re just guessing that; you can’t—”

  “What do you want?” asked Vihaan harshly. “You want to wait and find out? With us still dead in the water and unable to Jump safely?”

  “No, but—”

  “Arnold, prepare a missile,” Vihaan ordered.

  “Yessir.”

  “Wait!” snapped Beth. Vihaan and Arnold turned back. Vihaan looked at her stonily. “Wait a minute. They’ve been sitting there for at least a day; they can hang on another minute.”

  She peered at it again. “I don’t think it’s a spy ship,” she said.

  Vihaan snorted. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “Because you are now an expert in Videshi military systems, yes?”

  “No,” she snapped, “but it looks more to me like this thing is damaged.” She pointed towards the flattened fins. “Do those seem right to you?”

  Mikkel examined them. “No,” he said. “Usually they are all upright.”

  “I think they’ve been crushed,” said Beth. “I think they Jumped into this mess and collided with the debris. Do you know what the fins are for?”

  There was silence. “Ship,” called Beth. “What are the fins for on the back of this Videshi craft?”

  Ship’s hologram appeared. “Precise identification cannot be confirmed,” it said. “It is speculated that the fins are emitters used to create Jump gaps.”

  Lauryn said, “You think they can’t Jump back out? Like, they’re stranded here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Arnold.

  “Do you think they know we are here?” asked Lucille nervously.

  Vihaan said, “Of course they know. They watched us arrive.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Mikkel. “Their sensors could be damaged. They could be blind.”

  Beth watched the little ship. “They know we’re here,” she said. “That’s why they’re trying to keep within the wreckage. They’re hiding from us.”

  Vihaan lifted his arms in astonishment.

  “So what do we do?” asked Arnold again.

  “Destroy it, I told you,” said Vihaan. “Stop them reporting back. Even if they are damaged, they could find a way. They could repair their fins and Jump.”

  “No,” said Beth.

  She stared at the screen, and took a deep breath.

  “I think we should help them,” she said.

  22

  Help

  Vihaan was opposed, of course. Arnold agreed with Vihaan, folding his arms and glaring. And, on the other side, Beth and Lauryn. Mikkel claimed he had no opinion and went back to his reports. Lucille, while terrified of approaching the Videshi ship, was even more terrified at the thought of its crew recovering by themselves and getting angry.

  “Helping them is the worst thing we could possibly do!” shouted Vihaan. “Even assuming you’re right – right that they’re not hostile, right that they’re not spies, right that their ship’s damaged, right even about what the damage is – even with all of that, if we actually fix it, then all we’re doing is helping them bring more Videshi here!”

  “They’re stranded, Vihaan!” Beth shouted back. “They’re stranded in space – they can’t get back; they’re helpless. Doesn’t that remind you of anyone? Don’t you have any empathy?”

  “We can’t take the chance,” said Arnold in a matter-of-fact way. “I don’t think we need to kill them, but we can leave them alone. Their people will find them eventually.”

  “What, like ours have found us?” asked Lauryn.

  “We’re in the middle of Videshi space!” shouted Vihaan. “Yes, they’ll find them! And us too!”

  “Enough!” snapped Beth. “It’s two against two, and this isn’t a democracy. I’m the captain and we’re going to see if we can help them and that’s it.”

  Vihaan closed his mouth and glared at Beth, emotions flickering across his face: anger, conflicted loyalty, discipline, fear…

  “You,” he said at last in a quiet, clenched voice, “are going to get us all killed.”

  He marched off the bridge, kicking a chair hard against the wall as he left.

  There was silence for a few seconds. Then Beth said, “Mikkel, send a greeting. Can you do that?”


  He shrugged. “Sure, I can try. Hold on.”

  Beth waited.

  Eventually Mikkel said, “It is ready. Ship says it is OK.”

  “Send it.”

  It played over the speakers as he transmitted, a weird collection of mostly vowels and mouth shapes combined with clicking, and high-pitched squeals that seemed to repeat themselves in loops and inner loops. It beamed out over a tight radio signal to the Videshi vessel.

  “I’ve sent them a formal request for talks,” said Mikkel. “I’ve said that we’re friendly. I’ve offered to help.”

  The tiny ship didn’t move.

  “Nothing,” said Lauryn.

  “Try it again.”

  Again, no response. Beth was about to tell him to try a third time when the image changed. A shimmering pattern of lights appeared on the surface of the distant ship and the radio receivers filled up with noise, similar to what Mikkel had sent, but not the same. It was much faster and higher-pitched, and involved many more screeching sounds.

  “That’s it replying!” shouted Mikkel.

  Beth nodded. “Turn it down!” she shouted back.

  The sounds dipped to a manageable level and Mikkel started translating with Ship’s help. After a few minutes he said, “You were right.

  “They’re asking us not to attack. They say they have defences. They say their mothership is on the way, but … I think I do not believe them.”

  “Ask them if they need help Jumping,” said Beth.

  Mikkel nodded and scribbled some notes. “Ready.”

  “Send.”

  A shorter delay this time, and a stream of concentrated traffic. Mikkel had to get Ship to play it three or four times, and then checked his notes, then listened again.

  Finally, he said, “It is strange. It is like no but also yes. It says no first, but then it says that if we wanted to fix the fins then they probably couldn’t stop us, and if we did then they’d be able to Jump.” He scratched his head again. “Maybe I have misunderstood, yes?”

  There was something oddly familiar about it to Beth, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. A mix of bravado and fear… “OK. So far so good. Next question – how do we fix it?”

  Arnold snorted. “Don’t look at me. There’s no way I’m going over there.”

  “Relax,” said Beth. “I’m not planning on sending anyone over. But we could use Stumpy. Give him a booster pack and he could fly over.”

  “Wait,” said Lucille. “We need Stumpy to fix the emitters. What if he is destroyed?”

  “We’ve got Lucky,” said Beth. “And Arnold’s working on a third one, right?”

  But Arnold’s face was rigid with anger.

  “What, spend hours putting them together so you can hand them out to Videshi?” he demanded. “That’s a pretty stup—” He clamped his mouth shut and then said, “That’s not a good idea in my opinion, captain.”

  “Look, we haven’t said we’re doing it yet! Just, let’s work out if there’s anything we can do. OK?”

  Lauryn said, “Mikkel and I think there is.”

  She showed them the ship at maximum magnification. This close, Beth could see how the three largest fins had been almost sheared off the top of the vessel, perhaps by a rock catching them on the way past. They were clinging on by a few strands of cable.

  “We can’t do any fine-tuning,” said Mikkel. “But we think the fins—”

  “The fins are fastened on by multiple semi-autonomous weld systems,” said Lauryn rapidly, cutting across him. He smiled and let her continue. “They’re self-sealing and auto-regenerative and they can actually fix themselves, at least for small damage, except in this case the fins are completely flattened, so if Stumpy just lines them back up we think the whole assemblage will reconnect and calibrate by itself. It’s a pretty cool system actually; it’s almost like a cell-based repair system—”

  “OK!” Beth held up a hand. “So … you’re saying that we just get Stumpy over there, and all it has to do is put them back where they were? No welding or anything like that?”

  “Definitely,” said Lauryn.

  “Maybe,” said Mikkel.

  This was a crazy idea. Vihaan might be right. The Videshi … they weren’t quite enemies, but they definitely weren’t friends. She thought about Kier’s description of them in the classroom after their first encounter, and the reports she’d seen as part of her captain’s training. There had been countless flare-ups between the two species, more so now that humans were spreading out. Videshi were powerful and dangerous in battle, almost indestructible. And they were aggravatingly nebulous in diplomacy; their language was bizarrely vague; and no one had been able to work out their system of government, or where their leaders might be. There were no treaties with the Videshi, no proper borders, no agreed territories. No one had even seen a Videshi, only their ships. No one had any idea what they looked like.

  And now they were going to send a Gizmo over to a Videshi ship and attempt repairs they didn’t understand, when they were still barely able to safely Jump themselves … when they needed to repair their own ship before Captain Murdoch found them…

  It was a crazy idea.

  But there was something about the plight of the little craft that got to her. Its crew were stranded just like them, helpless just like them. And it seemed so small.

  She made up her mind.

  “We’ll send Lucky,” she said. “Lucky should be able to stand the fins up if that’s all we need to do. And he’s not doing much for us just now. OK, Arnold?”

  Arnold glowered for a moment, and then gave a short nod.

  “Good,” said Beth. “Get him ready, please.”

  She turned to Lauryn and Mikkel. “I hope you’re right.”

  They sent the Gizmo out after lunch.

  Vihaan had returned to the bridge and resumed his duties. He said nothing, but was still clearly furious. Arnold fastened Lucky up with a booster unit and they sent him over. Arnold steered, which seemed to cheer him up, and the mangled Gizmo zipped through space, dodging smaller rocks cast out from the asteroid field until it closed in on the Videshi ship.

  The ship’s surface was covered in pulsating lights, like status indicators, and the ship itself was vibrating, tendrils waving back and forth. With great care, Arnold landed the Gizmo on to the hull and activated its magnetic feet.

  Nothing happened. Beth breathed out.

  “You know,” murmured Lauryn, “I don’t know if anyone’s ever actually landed a Gizmo on to a Videshi ship before. This could be a record.”

  Yeah, thought Beth. Most reckless mission ever.

  They watched as Lucky dragged itself towards the damaged area. The Gizmo stood, in its slightly slumped way, for a few seconds, examining and analysing the pieces. Then Arnold whispered some instructions into his mike and it moved forward.

  As it lifted the smallest of the three fins, the ship shuddered under its feet. Lucky lost hold of the fin and it drifted to one side again. The Gizmo stopped and waited until the vibrations stopped, and then tried again more slowly. This time the ship stayed still. Lucky held the fin upright in place for a few seconds. When it let go, the fin stayed where it was.

  “That’s one,” breathed Beth. Beside her, Vihaan chewed his cheek and ran constant scans on the nearby area, looking out for threats.

  Lucky scraped across to the second sail. This one latched upright immediately. Arnold spoke into his mike and the Gizmo went to the third and largest fin. With no gravity, weight wasn’t an issue, but mass and momentum were; Lucky had to move it very slowly and carefully, making sure not to tear the few connectors that still fastened it to the top of the ship.

  The Gizmo lifted the sail and held it in place. In their magnified view Beth and the others could actually see the connectors writhing at the base, fastening it to the ship. After ten seconds, Lucky let go … and the fin stayed.

  Lights shone all around. The surface of the small Videshi ship lit up into bright colours of diffe
rent patterns that pulsed along its whole length.

  “Awesome!” exclaimed Arnold.

  “Arnold, bring Lucky home,” said Beth, but he was already on it, whispering instructions. The colours were flashing brighter and faster now, almost too fast to make out. A stream of Videshi signals screeched around the bridge – happy? Unhappy? Beth couldn’t tell. And then … the little ship Jumped, leaving Lucky alone in space.

  “Whoa!” breathed Arnold.

  “It just Jumped? Just like that?” asked Lauryn. “How could it Jump so quickly?”

  Vihaan tapped at his screen, fingers stabbing. “Happy now?” he snarled, to no one in particular. “We’ve fixed their ship and now they’ve gone to tell their friends about us. We have got to get ready to Jump now, understand?”

  Beth looked at him for a second and then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Mikkel, charge the emitters and get ready for Sleep. Arnold, get Lucky and Stumpy fastened on to the hull; there’s no time to bring them in. Lucille, ready or not, we’re going to Jump. Everyone else, find yourself a console. Mikkel?”

  “Three minutes to charge, captain,” he murmured. They sat quietly, listening to the beats of their hearts and the slow tick of seconds. They’d have a bit of time, surely? It would have to Wake up after its first Jump, and then find another ship…

  “Two minutes,” said Mikkel.

  …and then it would have to Jump back. There probably wasn’t all this need for them to rush out, but better safe than—

  The space around them shifted and there on the screen was the largest Videshi vessel Beth had ever seen. Like the little one, it was vaguely squid-shaped, but this was colossal. Its body was three times as long as Orion and fatter, and vast tendrils stretched out behind it, many times longer again.

  It dwarfed them. They were so close their cameras couldn’t hold it all in one shot.

  “Oh, damn,” exclaimed Arnold. “Captain, what should we do? Should I— Should I fire, captain? Beth?”

  Beth stared. “Oh my god,” she murmured.