Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  “True enough. In that case, I’m not sure I like how the other ship treated interlopers. Since they might view us the same way.”

  “Although we don’t know what kind of history the two might have,” Maja said.

  “What happened to that other ship?” Cerevare asked suddenly. She’d been sitting like a statue, taking in the discussion.

  Nobody answered.

  “Did anyone see?” I asked.

  “They either went through the Delta Pavonis wormhole after the Chron—” Rei began.

  “Or were destroyed by the explosion when they fired on it,” Viss finished for her.

  “Or they could have gone back through the other wormhole,” Baden said. “I was out for a few minutes, and I wasn’t watching them when I did wake up.”

  “No,” Maja agreed, “you were trying to rouse me. You weren’t paying attention to anything outside the ship then.”

  Gerazan asked, “And when did they do—whatever they did—to the Stillwell?”

  “Good question. I don’t think it exploded in this vicinity, anyway,” Yuskeya said. She keyed something into the nav board. “There isn’t enough debris particulate to account for more than the Domtaw.”

  “Any drive signature?” Viss asked. It was the first thing I’d heard him ask Yuskeya directly since their falling-out.

  She didn’t look at him, but she answered. “No, I didn’t get a signature reading on them while everything was happening. It doesn’t seem that anything went back through the wormhole recently, but I can’t say for sure. We don’t know anything about their technology or what might be possible for them.”

  “But surely there’d be some trace?” Gerazan protested. His voice had thinned out and gone flat, as if the pressures of this discussion and the realization of the situation were slowly crushing him.

  “Not necessarily,” Rei said gently. “What if they, say, powered their ships with some sort of telepathy? That wouldn’t leave any trace that we’d be aware of.”

  His eyes went wide. “Is that possible?”

  Rei smiled. “Probably not. But that example shows how far apart we could be from the technology of another race we’ve never encountered before. And I think,” she continued, turning to me, “that we need a break. Double caffs and sweet kuko all around?”

  “What about rationing?” Maja asked seriously.

  “I think Rei’s right,” I said. “One round of caff and cake isn’t going to significantly affect our chances of survival. Rei, Cerevare, and Gerazan, would you head down to the galley and fix us a snack? Yuskeya, let’s check on our guest in First Aid.”

  Yuskeya followed me into the First Aid station and raised her eyebrows when I slid the door shut behind us.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked her, nodding toward Chen. His breathing seemed steady enough, but his skin was pale and glistened with a sheen of sweat.

  Yuskeya touched the back of her hand to his cheek and read the monitors mounted above the bed. A frown of concern creased her forehead. “He’s stable, but I can’t figure out what’s wrong with him—and neither can the med scanners. I can’t give you a prognosis.”

  “Okay, let’s keep a close watch on him,” I said. “Now, you have another patient to deal with.”

  She glanced at me. “Captain? You okay?”

  “Not really.” I pressed my fingertips to my temples, hoping it would relieve some pressure. It didn’t. “I think I have a headache, and I’m wondering if there’s anything you can do about that.”

  She smiled a little. “You think you have a headache? Don’t you know?”

  I half-smiled in return. “In a word, no. Thanks to Mother’s bioscavengers, I’ve never had one before—at least, not one that lasted. And to tell you the truth, I’m more than a little worried about having one now.”

  WHEN LANAR AND I were children, our mother worked as a genetic engineer for PrimeCorp. I didn’t know it at the time, but her work involved development of nanobioscavengers that would extend the human lifespan indefinitely, similar to those that repair internal injuries and cure cancers. When she found out that PrimeCorp intended to use the technology to maintain a stranglehold on Nearspace governments, she took all her research and fled with it. My father, Lanar, and I went with her.

  For a while our family lived on the run, but when I was fourteen she decided she couldn’t do that to us any longer. She went underground on her own. Not before she’d injected both me and my brother (unbeknownst to us) with the current version of the bioscavs, however. Naturally, she’d tested them on herself first. And offered them to my father, but he refused—a decision I’ve never really understood, but had to respect.

  I searched Nearspace for Mother for more than fifty years before I finally found her, and I still look thirty even though I’m over eighty. My mother was, and is, an excellent researcher.

  Throughout all that time the little machines ticked over inside me, ensuring that in addition to not aging, I neither got sick nor suffered any injury for long before it healed within hours. Even childbirth was dulled from the outset, to be more of a discomfort than anything else. So a persistent headache that would not relent was something of a new experience for me, and I can’t say I was enjoying it.

  Although they hadn’t known for long, my crew knew all these secrets about me now, so Yuskeya wasn’t terribly surprised at my lack of experience with headaches. She pursed her lips.

  “I have an injection that should help,” she said. “As long as your little nano friends don’t take it as an intruder and destroy it.”

  “Give it a try,” I told her. “They must be taking the day off, or I wouldn’t be feeling this. And—let’s keep this between us for now, okay?”

  “As long as it doesn’t get me into trouble with Hirin,” she said with a wry grin.

  “If it does, I’ll take full responsibility.”

  She injected the drug directly into my forearm implant, from whence it would be distributed through my body. As she pulled away she took my hand, turning it over to see the blisters where my overheated datapad had scorched the flesh.

  “Hmmm.” She frowned. “Shouldn’t this be healing already?”

  I inspected the burn myself. The skin remained as red and angry as it had been when it happened. My nanobioscavs seemed to be off the job in more ways than one. “I guess I’ll take that salve after all.”

  “The injection should block the pain, and the salve will boost the healing,” she said.

  I nodded silently. It felt . . . weird . . . to need medical assistance. I didn’t like it.

  “Captain—Luta,” she said as she smoothed on salve and wrapped the burns in healstrips, “I have to try and get word to the Protectorate about what’s happened here.”

  I nodded. “I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Do you think a comm signal will make it through the wormhole? We didn’t have much luck even before the . . . incident.”

  She shrugged. “It’s worth a try. But how long can we afford to wait around and see if we get a reply?”

  “How long can we wait to see if the wormhole fixes itself?” I asked in return. “We’re groping in the dark here, in more ways than one. I’m trying to get people thinking, making plans, but the situation could change any minute. If another ship comes through that second wormhole—”

  “I know.”

  “Yuskeya,” I said, “do you feel that you should be in charge here? You probably have the authority to commandeer the Tane Ikai as a Protectorate officer in this situation.”

  Her eyes went wide, then she chuckled. “I probably do. But it hadn’t occurred to me. You’re the captain of this ship, Luta, not me. If you started doing something that I thought the Protectorate wouldn’t approve of—”

  “Which is probably over half the things I’ve done in my lifetime,” I interjected.

  She laughed again. “Okej, that I thought the Protectorate would disapprove of in this particular situation, I might call you on it. Mostly to cover my azeno when I ha
ve to make a report. But this is your crew, not a Protectorate one. I’d only have a mutiny on my hands if I tried to take over.”

  “I’m counting on your help to get us out of this.”

  “I thought you were still disgruntled that I was . . . collecting information while posing as your navigation officer.”

  I fixed her with a stare. “You were my navigation officer. Still are. And I wasn’t mad at you—not really. I was more annoyed with Lanar. But I’ll tell you one thing, Yuskeya. I’m glad you’re here with us.”

  Her dark eyes twinkled. “I can’t say I’m glad I’m here,” she said, “since we’re in deep trouble. But you can count on me, you know that.”

  “I do,” I said. “Let’s go get some kuko and figure a way out of this mess.”

  THE OTHERS WERE all on the bridge when Yuskeya and I emerged. “No change in Lieutenant Chen’s condition,” I told Gerazan Soto. “I’m sorry. But he is holding on.”

  The cryptographer nodded. His olive skin was shaded with grey, his eyes dull. The loss of the Domtaw was still sinking in, and he was having a hard time with it. I realized with a pang of guilt that I hadn’t thought to ask him if he’d lost anyone very close on the ship.

  “Lieutenant—Gerazan,” I said, “would you take a little walk with me?”

  He nodded automatically and followed me off the bridge. We walked down the corridor to the galley, footsteps ringing hollowly on the metal decking.

  “I know this has been a terrible shock for you,” I said gently.

  He straightened his shoulders, and nodded. “It’s a blow to the Protectorate,” he said. “I’m not looking forward to filing this report.”

  I glanced at him. He stared straight down the corridor, but his eyes were unfocused. I led him into the galley when we got there and motioned him to a chair at the table. “What can I get you to drink?”

  He sat, but said, “I don’t need anything, Captain, thank you.”

  I sighed and pulled off a double caff for myself, steaming and creamy, and went to sit across the table from him. I closed my eyes and took a sip before I said anything else, allowing myself a few seconds to savour the smooth, rich bite of the drink on my tongue.

  When I opened my eyes, his were downcast, studying the unremarkable surface of the table. I cleared my throat. “Gerazan, you lost people—friends, colleagues, maybe even family, for all I know—on the Domtaw. Do you need to talk about it?”

  He didn’t raise his head right away, but I noticed his hands, clasped before him on the tabletop, clench tighter. Finally he met my eyes. “I wasn’t part of the regular crew, Captain. I’d only come aboard for this mission.”

  “So you weren’t close to anyone on board?”

  “I . . . I did have some friends.” He nodded and swallowed. “They died in service of the Protectorate. They knew the risks. We all accept them.”

  I thought briefly about meaningless platitudes, but said only, “What about Chen and Antixo?”

  “Antixo was like me, a special assignment.” He glanced away. “Chen’s wife was on board the Domtaw.”

  I sighed. Maybe that explained something. “If Chen comes around, I’ll tell him. It doesn’t have to be you.”

  The Lieutenant sat a little straighter, hands clasped tightly before him on the table. “I was nominally in charge down there, Captain. Chen is my responsibility. I’ll tell him about the Domtaw.”

  I didn’t say if he makes it. I knew we were both thinking it anyway.

  I took another sip of my drink. “Okay, so that brings us back to you. We’re all shaken up by this, but obviously you and Chen are the hardest hit. If you need or want to talk to someone about it—”

  “Thank you, Captain, but I’m fine.”

  I levelled a stern stare at him, catching his eyes and not letting them go. “Theoretically, I could order Commander Blue to order you to talk to her about it. She outranks you.”

  He stiffened, but he must have caught the hint of a smile I allowed through. He answered with a weak one of his own. “That won’t be necessary. If I do—or when I do—I’ll speak up. Thanks for your concern.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not just about you. We’re in what you might call a tight spot here, so I need everyone on board doing the best they can.”

  Gerazan nodded with a rueful smile. “I don’t think you have much need for a cryptographer at the moment, but I was an assistant engineer for a while. I might be able to contribute something.”

  I stood up, taking my mug with me. At least our conversation had seemed to wake him up a little, which I hoped was a good thing. “Good to know. I’ll tell Viss that if he needs a hand in engineering, you’re the man. You sure you don’t want a drink to take with you to the bridge?”

  He glanced at the machine. “Well, maybe something cold . . .”

  “Help yourself,” I told him. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

  I left him musing over his choices and returned up the corridor to the bridge.

  “A bit of new of information, Captain,” Baden said as soon as I emerged. “The database shows two explored wormholes that emerged in systems with Type B stars, similar to this one.”

  “Any chance this is one of them?”

  “Doubtful, unfortunately. Judging by the configuration of planets logged for them, this one doesn’t seem to match up to either.”

  “Okej,” I said, “what else?”

  “We’re starting to get some analysis on the scan data Yuskeya recorded while the—attacks, I guess we have to call them—were happening.” Baden paused. “There’s a lot to go through. This is only the beginning.”

  I settled myself in the big chair. “Okay, what do we have so far?”

  “Some of it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “Like the data on the second ship, for one thing,” Rei said. “The spidery one.”

  Gerazan entered the bridge carrying a tall glass. He slipped into the co-pilot’s chair beside Rei.

  I smiled. “That’s how I was thinking of it, too. The surface shimmered, as if it were treated with something reflective. Or maybe it was painted to project a certain look?”

  “Neither.” Rei sat back and crossed her arms. “The chemical composition of the hull doesn’t match any metal or alloy we can identify. It’s something entirely different. Which means we can’t even speculate on its properties.” She sounded glum. I noticed that Gerazan was listening closely. She was gazing at the screen. He was gazing at her. Interesting.

  “Any readings on the weapons?” Viss asked.

  Rei shook her head. “Nothing classifiable. Something that read like ultra-high energy particles. Can’t be more specific.”

  “All right, so do we know what effect that kind of weapon would have if it were fired into a wormhole?” Gerazan asked. “Surely at some point someone has experimented with something like that? I mean, in the early days of wormhole exploration, maybe, when they were still trying to figure out if the damn things were even safe?”

  “Wormholes aren’t something you mess around with, Lieutenant,” Viss answered. “We’ve never known, and still don’t, what might happen to the connected systems if a wormhole collapsed or was damaged, and no-one is willing to take the risk to find out. This,” and he nodded toward the malevolently swirling wormhole, “is the closest we’ve ever come.”

  “Cerevare, have you had a chance to compare our scans on the first ship—the one you identified as Chron—to your own data?” I asked. “Were you right?”

  She gave me a grave nod over the top of her steaming mug. She had a sweet tooth, I’d learned, and preferred hot cocoa to drink. “They are a match, Captain.”

  “Not that I doubted you,” I assured her with a smile, and lifted my own mug to her in salute. “Anything else new?”

  “I checked the pilot registry database for the name Jahelia Sord, and it returned some interesting results,” Yuskeya said. “Sord was a Protectorate candidate, one of their top student pilots, extremely competent AI tec
h as well. She dropped out after her third year of training at the akademio. Went home because of her father’s ill health; he died, she never returned to training. But while she was in school, she was good. Has piloted a number of vessels since then, the latest being that little starrunner she’s stuck in now, the Hunter’s Hope. Which,” she added, “now that I’ve been able to cross-reference the drive signatures, is registered to a dummy corporation that’s linked to . . . can you guess?”

  “PrimeCorp?”

  She nodded. “Exactly. As for Sord, there’s nothing shady on her record, but that would be easy enough for an employer like PrimeCorp to remove. And this is interesting—her great-grandfather worked at PrimeCorp years ago.”

  “If she’s that experienced, I’d rather have her stay on her own ship as long as possible, then. They teach more than piloting at the Protectorate campus.”

  Yuskeya threw me a wink. “No, we come out quite—well-rounded, some of us.”

  I contemplated my caff, then surveyed the faces turned to me. “Okej, so the main question, folks, is—what do we do next?”

  No-one answered right away, so I went on. “I’ve thought about it, and I’m willing to stay put here for up to three days and see what happens, with the Delta Pav wormhole, or otherwise. I need to get a message to my mother, so getting back to Nearspace is an urgent necessity. During that time, Viss can see to the burst drive, and we’ll attempt to send a comm signal through the wormhole to see if we get a reply. We’ll keep taking whatever readings we can on the moon, and keep an eye on the Stillwell and the other wormhole. But if nothing happens by that time, we need another plan. We can’t stay here indefinitely.”

  “Can we investigate this system for other wormholes?” Cerevare asked.

  Yuskeya said, “We can do some long-range scanning, but we aren’t really equipped for wormhole hunting. We might get lucky, but the chances of us getting home that way—they’re slim. Even if we found a new wormhole, who knows where it would come out?”