Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  I signalled to Baden to cut our outgoing signal as well and looked around at the others. “What do you think? Does he suspect something or is he just rude?”

  Baden shrugged. “There's nothing in any of that information that anyone should look twice at. It's the same stuff we download to every docking authority—well, except for the specifics of the cargo.”

  “And our two passengers,” Rei reminded him.

  “I doubt anyone's looking for them,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Ship's coming up from the planet,” Yuskeya said. “Signature reads as an MPP Ironwing.”

  “So someone's coming to visit us.” I took a deep breath, wishing the intruder's body was already floating somewhere between here and Mars. I'd wanted to get further away from Earthspace before we jettisoned it, but now it seemed that might have been a bad idea. “Okay, folks, we're just going to cooperate, here. If they find anything they shouldn't, I'll tell them what happened and take full responsibility. PrimeCorp's not quite as popular on Mars as it is on Earth, so that might run in our favour.”

  Viss' drawling voice came over the comm from Engineering. “Just as a point of interest, Captain, the Tane Ikai could fly circles around an MPP Ironwing and be gone outsystem before they finished getting a signature reading.”

  I smiled. “Noted. But I'd rather not put us on the Nearspace fugitives list if I don't have to. And we do have cargo to deliver.”

  “Just a thought, Captain.”

  “Hail the Ironwing, Baden. I may have to put up with this, but I don't have to pretend that I like it.” When he gave me the nod, I said, “Mars Planetary Police vessel approaching the far trader Tane Ikai. Please respond to this comm and state your purpose.”

  The face on the viewscreen was not that of the weary Flight Officer who'd hailed us first, but a woman, much younger but with a stern set to her jaw.

  “MPP Red Wing Arla Jansen here, Captain Paixon, and my Flight Officer, Tamri Ongolonan is with me. We'd like a word with you on board your vessel, if that's convenient.”

  “May I ask why? We seem to be having a perfectly clear conversation over this comm.”

  She wasn't easily rebuffed, though she kept glancing at her controls, not holding my gaze. “My orders are to speak with you in person, Captain. We're investigating several criminal matters at this time and we're hoping you may be able to assist us.”

  I was about to give in when another voice broke in on the comm.

  “Thank you, MPP Ironwing. The Nearspace Protectorate is assuming authority in questioning this vessel. Your revised orders should appear on your console any second now.”

  I almost grinned, but kept my face impassive. The voice was one I knew well.

  Red Wing Jansen's lips tightened a little as she looked at her console. She didn't resume eye contact with me. “Certainly, Admiralo,” she said with cold politeness. “Bonan tagon, Captain.” The comm screen went blank, only to spring to life again a moment later. The face filling it now was grinning.

  “Saluton, little sister! Kiel vi fartas?”

  “I'm fine, thank you, but it's big sister, remember? Just because you're an Admiralo doesn't put you first in everything.”

  He laughed aloud, showing even, white teeth. His dark hair showed no signs of grey and his face was as unlined as mine. He didn't look eighty any more than I looked eighty-four. “All right, you're still the boss. Now tell me, what have you been doing to annoy the Mars Police?”

  I looked as innocent as possible. “Absolutely nothing. I'm just passing by on my way outsystem, about to dropdown some cargo, when—”

  “They want to question you about something with no provocation whatsoever, I know, I know. You sure seem to attract bad luck, Luta.” He shook his head in mock sympathy.

  Baden snickered quietly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rei punch him in the arm. The crew knew, of course, that Lanar was my brother, and seemed to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in the teasing he gave me. “Okay, I might have a couple things I'm not really eager to tell them about,” I admitted. “But nothing they need to know.”

  “No data runners on board?” he asked. “I hear PrimeCorp's keen to track down a cagey one who's managing to avoid all their traps between Earthspace and the Cassiopeias. Seems he—or she—is playing fast and loose with PrimeCorp data, and they don't like that at all.”

  I shook my head. “No data runners that I'm aware of.”

  “Hmph. Like you'd tell me.” His grey eyes sparkled with amusement. He leaned back in his chair, and I saw that he was in his shipboard office. The wall plaque behind him, with the insignia and motto of the Protectorate, framed his face. “Okay, know anything about any mysterious disappearances before you left Earthspace?”

  My heart thudded but I said coolly, “No, but if it were Alin Sedmamin who disappeared I confess I wouldn't shed any tears.”

  Lanar snorted. “Azeno! Is he bothering you again?”

  “Nothing I can't handle. Although one thing he said made me wonder. Something about 'changes in the wind' that would favour PrimeCorp. Any idea what he might have meant?”

  Lanar pursed his lips. “He said this over a real-time link?”

  I nodded. “He was trying to convince me to come in and see him, as usual.”

  “I'm surprised he'd say that. It almost sounds like an admission of something, doesn't it?” His face wasn't giving anything away.

  “It might, if I had any idea what you were talking about.”

  He seemed to consider, then said, “Not just yet, Luta. But yes, we think PrimeCorp is up to something.”

  “Gee, what a surprise.”

  He grinned. “Want to do me a favour? Where are you headed next?”

  “I have cargo for Eri,” I said cautiously. I didn't want to volunteer the information that we would be heading for the Split after that. Lanar would try to talk me out of it, and I wasn't in the mood to fight with him.

  “Perfect! Will you courier a datachip to the Protectorate headquarters there? It will save me a stop.”

  “No top secret information that's going to make me a target, is there? I have enough trouble on my hands already.”

  “Cross my heart,” he said solemnly. “I was about to pick it up from the Superintendent on Mars, but I'll message him and tell him to deliver it to—who will you send to collect it? Viss?”

  “Sure, he'll probably have some part or something to pick up anyway. But you'll owe me one,” I warned. “I'm not the one who signed on to be an errand runner for the Protectorate.”

  Lanar laughed. “I haven't actually run that many errands since I made Admiral, but I don't mind being in your debt.”

  Curiosity got the better of me. “You won't really be, anyway. Not that I'm complaining, Lanar, but why did you step in with that Ironwing? You didn't think I was actually in trouble, did you?”

  He chuckled again. “No, I just wanted to talk to you and I didn't have an hour to wait for MPP to finish jabbering. I know what they're looking for and it wouldn't apply to you anyway. They're boarding every ship that's left Earthspace in the last three days.”

  I felt a little pang at his trust, thinking about what was concealed in the secret locker, but I brushed it off. “So what's up?”

  He went suddenly serious. “We were docked at Sagan and I spoke with Karro. He told me about Hirin. I'm—it will be a big loss—for the family. Is he there?”

  “It sure will.” I brushed away a tear that had sprung up too fast for me to try and blink it back. “He's doing fine so far, though, and he's happy—really happy. He's in his cabin. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “I'm glad you can do this for him, then. Yes, put me through. I've got a run to Lambda Saggitae on the board but I have a minute. Oh, and little sister,” he added, the grin sneaking back across his face, “try to stay out of trouble, would you? I'll tell them to let you sidestep the red tape this time, but I'm not always going to be there to get the MPP or anyone else off your tail.”

 
I stuck out my tongue at him. “I don't need a babysitter anyway, but thanks. It saved me a chunk of time, if nothing else.”

  “No problem at all. See you 'round Nearspace,” he said, and I signalled Baden to transfer the feed to Hirin's quarters.

  After we'd contacted Mars Berthing again and arranged for the cargo dropdown, I realized that Lanar hadn't mentioned Mother. He usually asked—in an oblique way—if I'd had any luck with the search, even though I think he'd lost his own hope of finding her long ago.

  I tried to brush it off. We hadn't had a long conversation, he was in a hurry. But it emphasized the hollow ache in my chest, that dark suspicion that no matter how much I wanted it, I was never going to find her.

  Chapter Seven

  Dead Assailants and Other Mortalities

  I was finishing my morning session of tae-ga-chi when Rei signalled me on the ship's comm. We were seven days out from Earth, still two away from the vicinity of Jupiter and the wormhole to MI 2 Eridani.

  “Good place to get rid of our unwanted cargo,” she advised. “The only thing on the scanners is a big asteroid. If I calibrate it right I can set him down right on that.”

  I wondered if anyone else on board shared my pangs of guilt about getting rid of this inconvenient body. Sure, he'd broken onto my ship, assaulted me and tried to steal my genetic secrets—but did he really deserve to be jettisoned unceremoniously onto some nameless asteroid in the empty vastness of Nearspace? It gave me a twinge. I also still felt bad for lying to Lanar about it, and worried at how quickly word of the intruder's disappearance had spread to the outer planets Earthside.

  However, options were limited. He currently reposed in the frozen confines of Cargo Pod Two, but he'd already been there for a week and he couldn't stay there forever.

  “Okay, Rei, give me twenty minutes and I'll be on the bridge.”

  She hummed a few melancholy bars of what I imagined must be an Erian funeral dirge, then chuckled and broke the connection. I shouldn't have been surprised. Rei can find the humour in almost any situation, and if there isn't any she'll find a way to inject it. Forcibly.

  I slipped out of my bodyglove and pulled clothes out of the dresser. Tae-ga-chi is not a sweaty kind of workout, but it does tend to focus mind and body into such a mellow state that you move in slow motion for a while afterwards. I was only half-dressed when a knock sounded at the door of my cabin.

  Hirin's voice called, “It's me, Captain.”

  “Come in, Hirin.”

  He entered the cabin and quickly shut the door behind him. When he saw the state of my attire, or rather lack of it, his eyebrows shot up. “I swear, if I were twenty years younger—”

  “You'd still be wrinkled,” I laughed, but I stepped over to plant a kiss on his cheek. His arms came around me in a surprisingly strong embrace and he moved his head so that our lips met instead. He kissed me with unexpected ardor.

  When he released me, my pulse rate was higher than it had been during my workout. I stepped back in surprise and looked at him suspiciously.

  “Hirin Paixon, are you getting better?”

  He laughed, but then he said, “Honestly, Luta—I don't know. I feel so much stronger than I did back on Earth, you can't even imagine. Dr. Ndasa commented on it yesterday.”

  I studied him, cataloguing the slow changes that had been taking place in the week since we'd left the confines of Earth. Not only did he stand straighter, but his walk had lost much of its shuffling quality, and his face had filled out. His breathing was smoother and no longer wheezy. It was as if the faded version of him had been recoloured. Granted, the ship's artificial gravity was only 80% of Earth-normal, and the air a little richer in oxygen, but those things alone wouldn't account for the differences—would they? It seemed an unbelievable change for only seven days.

  “Does he have any ideas about it?”

  “I don't know—he did ask me if he could run some tests. I think he's going to start them today.”

  “What about the virus?”

  Hirin shrugged. “I'm going to ask him if he can find out what it's doing now. When I decided to come out here, I wasn't going to worry about it, just let things happen, until I came to the end. But now . . . now I'd like to know what's changed.”

  “Me, too.” I finished dressing quickly. I'd managed to sneak into Hirin's room a couple of nights since we left Earth and we'd slept curled against each other in the pure bliss of being together again. If Hirin kept getting stronger . . . well, one of those nighttime visits might turn into something more.

  When we left my cabin, Hirin headed down to the galley to join Dr. Ndasa for tea, and I went to the bridge. The rest of the crew was there, an impromptu send-off party for our uninvited visitor.

  “He's in a cargo crate in the jettison tube, all set for departure,” Baden said with a grin when I entered.

  “Why does everyone think this is so funny?” I snapped. “The man is dead, not going on vacation.”

  They went quiet. “Rei, get the calibrations right and just do it. I want this over with.”

  “Right you are, Captain,” she said. “It's all set. Do you want me to activate the homing beacon on the crate?”

  I considered. It didn't actually seem very likely that we'd ever want to find this particular asteroid again—in fact, I felt like if I never saw it again, I'd be just as happy. But the homing beacon was fairly weak, and you really had to know the calibration codes in order to find it. Cargo crates could go missing from time to time, so the beacon was useful to the vessel that owned them—but it wasn't like any passing vessel was likely to notice it and go to investigate. “Sure, turn it on, Rei. Launch when you're ready.”

  It took less than a minute for the image of the nondescript cargo crate to glide onto the viewscreen as it cleared the side of the ship. The asteroid Rei had targeted as a landing spot hung in the distance, a pockmarked, slowly rolling shape with a cluster of smaller followers.

  We watched for a few moments as the crate slid silently through the vacuum, on course for its asteroid gravesite. I was about to turn my attention from it when—it vanished.

  Someone gasped. I blinked.

  Viss said, “What the hell?”

  “Rei, scan for that crate,” I ordered.

  Her fingers flew over the console for a few seconds, then she said, “I can't get it. It isn't there anymore.”

  “It has to be there,” Yuskeya said. “Did you calibrate for the beacon?” She sat down at one of the sensor screens and ran several scans in quick succession. Then she sat back and dropped her hands to her lap, dark eyes puzzled. “Okej, it's not there.”

  “Wormhole?” Viss suggested, but Yuskeya shook her head.

  “We'd know if there was one that close. Hell, we'd be almost inside it. And without a skip field generator the crate would have been spit back out by now.”

  Baden snapped his fingers. “But maybe not if it's a pinhole.” He sat down and rapidly fed commands into the communications console.

  “I didn't think there were any pinholes out here,” Rei said.

  “Neither did I. Neither did anyone else, as far as I know,” Baden answered. He was grinning. “If I've found a new one, I'll get to name it.”

  “If it goes anywhere useful,” Yuskeya reminded him. “Communication pinholes aren't much good if they carry your message out to some unexplored system like Zeta Tucanae.”

  “Hey, don't ruin this for me, huh? At least wait until we know for sure.”

  “Excuse me.” I cleared my throat. “Captain here! Does anyone want to tell me how a cargo crate three meters long could disappear into a pinhole? Because that's what it sounds like you're saying might have happened, and I've never even heard of that possibility before. I thought they were only good for transmitting messages.”

  “Mostly they are,” Baden said, not taking his eyes off his screen, “but some of them are large enough that small items or craft can slip inside. You're right, it doesn't happen very often. And they don't work li
ke the big wormholes—they're a different kind of phenomena. They seem to have an internal force that draws from both ends and streams continuously down the length of the tunnel, and they don't need Krasnikov matter to keep them stable. That's why messages can travel so fast and reliably through them, although not as fast as a ship going through a wormhole.”

  “Thank you, Baden. Now, can you tell me where the hell this one goes—and where it's taken our unwanted and unlamented visitor?”

  He looked up at me with a grin. “Not yet. I've sent out a tracer scan, but it will have to exit the pinhole, pick up data, and bounce off the crate and back into the hole to be picked up again at this end before I'll know anything else.”

  “And how long will that take?” It all sounded doubtful to me.

  “Anywhere from ten seconds to a week,” Baden said.

  “A week? We can't stay here a week!”

  Baden shook his head. “No, seriously, I doubt it will take that long. It takes a week to get a return message through the pinhole between MI 2 Eridani and the Keridre/Gerdrice system, but that's because of the insystem distances. I expect we'll hear back from this one much faster than that.”

  How badly did I want to know where the crate had come out? It all came down to that. I sighed.

  “A day,” I decided. “We can't wait more than a day to find out about this. Rei, hold this position for twenty-four hours. The crate had no identification markings, so it would be almost impossible to trace it back to us anyway. I'll wait a day to see if Baden gets to name a pinhole, but that's it.”

  I turned and left the bridge before there was any further comment or complaint. Suddenly I just wanted to get away and think for a bit.

  One of the biggest problems with Nearspace travel on a far trader is how small the ship seems after the first few days. My cabin was four and a half meters by almost three, the largest of all the crew or passenger cabins, but it still felt mighty confining at times. The galley was bigger, but it never seemed to be empty. I passed by it, hearing Hirin and Dr. Ndasa laughing over their tea, and climbed down the hatchway to the engineering deck.